Euphoria is an American psychological teen drama television series created by Sam Levinson, which centers on a group of dysfunctional high school students at East Highland High School. The series premiered on June 16, 2019, on HBO.
Euphoria is an American psychological teen drama television series created by Sam Levinson, which centers on a group of dysfunctional high school students at East Highland High School. The series premiered on June 16, 2019, on HBO.
| Actor | Character | Seasons | Specials | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |||
| Main characters | |||||
| Zendaya | Rue Bennett | Main | |||
| Maude Apatow | Lexi Howard | Main | |||
| Angus Cloud | Fezco O'Neill | Main | Archive | ||
| Eric Dane | Cal Jacobs | Main | |||
| Alexa Demie | Maddy Perez | Main | |||
| Jacob Elordi | Nate Jacobs | Main | |||
| Barbie Ferreira | Kat Hernandez | Main | |||
| Nika King | Leslie Bennett | Main | Guest | ||
| Storm Reid | Gia Bennett | Main | Archive | ||
| Hunter Schafer | Jules Vaughn | Main | |||
| Algee Smith | Chris McKay | Main | |||
| Sydney Sweeney | Cassie Howard | Main | |||
| Colman Domingo | Ali Muhammad | Recurring | Main | ||
| Javon "Wanna" Walton | Ashtray | Recurring | Main | ||
| Austin Abrams | Ethan Daley | Recurring | Main | ||
| Dominic Fike | Elliot | Main | |||
| Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje | Alamo Brown | Main | |||
| Martha Kelly | Laurie | Recurring | Main | ||
| Chloe Cherry | Faye Valentine | Recurring | Main | ||
| Toby Wallace | Wayne | Main | |||
| Recurring characters | |||||
| Alanna Ubach | Suze Howard | Recurring | Guest | ||
| Lukas Gage | Tyler Clarkson | Recurring | |||
| John Ales | David Vaughn | Recurring | Guest | Guest | |
| Bruce Wexler | Robert Bennett | Recurring | Guest | Stand-in | |
| Sophia Rose Wilson | Barbara Brooks | Recurring | Guest | ||
| Tyler Timmons | Troy McKay | Recurring | |||
| Tristan Timmons | Roy McKay | Recurring | |||
| Keean Johnson | Daniel Dimarco | Recurring | |||
| Paula Marshall | Marsha Jacobs | Recurring | Guest | ||
| Zak Steiner | Aaron Jacobs | Recurring | Guest | ||
| Mercedes Colon | Kat's Mom | Recurring | |||
| Tyler Chase | Custer | Recurring | |||
| Meeko | Mouse | Recurring | Guest | ||
| Marsha Gambles | Miss Marsha | Recurring | Guest | ||
| Brynda Mattox | Marie O'Neill | Recurring | Guest | ||
| Nick Blood | Gus Howard | Guest | Recurring | ||
| Melvin "Bonez" Estes | Bruce Sr. | Recurring | |||
| Ansel Pierce | Caleb | Recurring | |||
| Minka Kelly | Samantha | Recurring | |||
| Yukon Clement | Theo | Recurring | |||
| Fernando Belo | Sebastian | Recurring | |||
| Veronica Taylor | Bobbi | Recurring | |||
| Gwen Mukes | Leslie's Mom | Recurring | |||
| Daeg Faerch | Mitch Bilster | Guest | Recurring | ||
| Sharon Stone | Patricia Lance | Recurring | |||
| Colleen Camp | LA Nights Director | Recurring | |||
| Marshawn "Beast Mode" Lynch | G | Recurring | |||
| Darrell Britt-Gibson | Bishop | Recurring | |||
| James Landry Hébert | Harley | Recurring | |||
| Rebecca Pidgeon | Ms. Penzler | Recurring | |||
| Gideon Adlon | Gillie | Recurring | |||
| Asante Blackk | Kidd | Recurring | |||
| Homer Gere | Dylan Reid | Recurring | |||
| Madison Thompson | Oceana | Recurring | |||
| Jessica Blair Herman | Heather | Recurring | |||
| Rosalía | Magick | Recurring | |||
| Kadeem Hardison | Big Eddy | Recurring | |||
| Jeff Wahlberg | Brandon Fontaine | Recurring | |||
| Sam Trammell | Ellis | Recurring | |||
| Jack Topalian | Naz | Recurring | |||
| Matthew Willig | Artur | Recurring | |||
| Hemky Madera | Jimenez | Recurring | |||
| William "Bill" Bodner | Bowman | Recurring | |||
| Anna Van Patten | Kitty | Recurring | |||
Ruby "Rue" Bennett was born on September 14, 2001, three days after 9/11. She is a recovering teenage drug addict who is fresh out of rehab and struggling to find her place in the world. Sarcastic and introverted, she serves as the narrator for the series. In the first season, she lives with her mom and sister. Her dad died from cancer before the start of the series. She is childhood friends with Lexi, and develops a romantic relationship with Jules. The second season finds her continuing to struggle with addiction as she becomes involved with drug trafficking for Laurie and enters an official relationship with Jules. In the third season, Rue is indebted to Laurie and is working as a drug mule to pay off her debt. She no longer lives with her mother or sister, maintains a friendship with Lexi, but has grown away from Jules. Alamo Brown, a local crime boss who operates strip clubs and partakes in arms trafficking, frees Rue from her debt to Laurie by employing her himself. She reconnects with Jules but is busted by the DEA, and agrees to work with them to avoid going to jail herself. At the end of the third season, Rue is poisoned by Alamo as revenge for working with the DEA, and she dies by fentanyl overdose on Ali's couch.
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Alexis "Lexi" Howard was born on October 23, 2001. She is Rue's childhood best friend and Cassie's younger sister. She spends most of her teenage years in the shadow of her sister, always feeling like an outsider and an observer of her own life. Determined to do more and to finally step into the spotlight, she creates a play called "Our Life" in the second season and bases it on events that have happened around her, including unflattering depictions of her friends. At the same time, she grows closer to Fezco after discovering an unexpected compatibility, including some unusual, shared interests (such as the 1986 film Stand by Me). In the third season, Lexi has continued to maintain a friendship with Rue and has become an assistant to Patricia Lance, the showrunner for the television series LA Nights.
Patrick "Fezco" O'Neill is a local drug dealer with a close, sibling-like relationship with Rue. He was raised by his grandmother, who is now disabled and he cares for. He lives with Ashtray ("Ash"), who he considers his business partner. Even though they are not related by blood, they treat each other like brothers. Fez starts a camaraderie with Lexi during the second season. In the third season, he is incarcerated in prison following his arrest at the end of the second season, but he still stays in contact with Rue.
Cal Jacobs is Nate's strict, demanding father who lives a double life. He is married to and fathered three children with Marsha, his high school girlfriend. In secret, he is a closeted homosexual who has one-night stands with men and transgender youths, including Jules, which he records with a hidden camera. In the second season, he drunkenly reveals his infidelity to his wife and children and leaves his family before being arrested. In the third season, Cal is an alcoholic who lives on his own after his wife divorced him. He attends Nate's wedding and reveals to Jules that he is now a registered sex offender as a result of being busted for sleeping with a 17-year-old who misled him about his age. He considers high school to be the best years of his life and asserts to Nate that his sexual relations with men were simply acts of hedonism.
Madeleine "Maddy" Perez was born on January 28, 2001. She is confident, popular, and cruel. She is Nate's on-and-off girlfriend and later ex-girlfriend. She has a turbulent relationship with her family and was emotionally and physically abused by Nate while they were together. Her greatest fear is ending up in a loveless relationship like her parents', so she often excuses Nate's acts of violence as proof of his passion and love for her, even going so far as to help him frame an innocent man for physically assaulting her, so Nate would get back together with her. Despite her hotheadedness, she can be kind and values her close friends, like Kat and BB, as well as Rue, Jules, and Lexi. Cassie was once her closest friend, before Cassie betrayed Maddy by having a secret relationship with Nate in the second season. Maddy ends their friendship, and her remaining friends support her decision. Maddy assaults Cassie after the latter interrupts Lexi's play. Afterwards, Cassie's remorse for her actions only furthers Maddy's resentment. In the third season, Maddy works as an assistant for the talent manager Ms. Penzler, before branching off on her own. She is initially successful, but eventually loses her best client. She reluctantly reconnects with Cassie for the first time since high school, seeing an opportunity to use Cassie to boost her own clientele. She attends Nate and Cassie's wedding but is overcome with emotion at the reception and leaves. Maddy later meets Rue's boss, Alamo Brown, and they agree to work together, with Maddy helping to promote some of Alamo's girls from his strip clubs. She later loses her job after her boss discovers that Maddy has Cassie as a client, and becomes indebted to Alamo when he helps save Cassie when she is kidnapped by Naz. Maddy then begins a partnership with Cassie and uses Nate's mansion to create a content house featuring Alamo's girls.
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Nathaniel "Nate" Jacobs was born on November 8, 2000. He is a high school athlete whose anger issues masked his sexual insecurities. He was traumatized as a child after viewing his father Cal's collection of pornography, which featured him having sex with male and transgender prostitutes. He harbored an unspecified fixation on Jules, had an on-and-off toxic relationship with Maddy, but later started a secret relationship with Cassie in the second season, which damaged the girls' friendship. Nate often had dangerous outbursts of anger and violence, of which Maddy was usually on the receiving end. In the third season, Nate shed his anger issues and became engaged to Cassie. He took over his father's construction company but had financial issues that indebted him to Naz, a dangerous mortuary mogul. Initially, he hid his debts from Cassie, but on their wedding night, his situation was exposed to her when Naz ordered his henchman to remove Nate's toe as a reminder of his debt. After being buried alive by Naz to force Cassie to settle the debt, Nate succumbs to a fatal rattlesnake bite.
Katherine "Kat" Hernandez was born on August 15, 2002. She is a girl fighting for body positivity while exploring her sexuality. She is a plus-sized teenager with chin-length hair, ivory skin, and dark brown eyes. She wears cat-eye glasses, and her everyday clothes often consist of average shirts, tops, and dresses, preferring minimalist makeup looks. After a video of Kat having sex is spread online, she is initially horrified but becomes intrigued when she receives comments expressing their arousal by her. Kat begins to wear bolder clothing, has a brasher personality, and becomes sexually active. However, Kat's insecurities grow when she gets closer to classmate Ethan Daley, which culminates in her confessing her feelings to Ethan. In season two, Kat continues dating Ethan, but over time, Kat becomes increasingly aware of her insecurities and begins to project her self-loathing onto Ethan. Kat tries to gaslight Ethan and blame her problems on him, but Ethan sees through her and reluctantly ends their relationship. Kat is later present when Maddy learns that Cassie had been sleeping with Nate behind her back.
Leslie Bennett is Rue and Gia's mother. After the death of her husband, Leslie takes care of her children on her own. Leslie hopes for Rue's sobriety, but after being deceived multiple times by Rue, she chooses to prioritize Gia by kicking Rue out of their home after the end of the second season. In the third season, while Leslie and Rue's relationship remains strained, they still keep in contact.
Georgia "Gia" Bennett was born in late 2005 and is Rue's caring and loyal younger sister. The summer before Rue's junior year, Gia found her overdosing and choking on a pool of vomit, which traumatized her.
Jules Vaughn is a transgender girl who enters into a turbulent relationship with Rue after moving to town with her father. She has a strained relationship with her mother, who placed her in a psychiatric hospital against her will when she was 11. She transitioned when she was 14. Free-spirited and kind, as well as emotional and impulsive, she often finds herself bearing the weight of Rue's addiction. She has a secret encounter with Cal, Nate's father, whom she lied about her age to. Jules begins chatting with, and eventually falls for, a guy she met online. She thinks his name is Tyler, but it is actually Nate. The truth is revealed when the two finally meet in person, and Jules is heartbroken. In the second season, she begins a relationship with Rue but eventually cheats on her with Elliot. In the third season, Jules is revealed to have dropped out of art school and has become a successful escort. She reconnects with Rue and the two briefly renew a sexual relationship, despite Jules sugaring for Ellis, a wealthy surgeon who pays for Jules lavish lifestyle. Rue attempts to rekindle a romantic relationship with Jules, but she declines. When Rue claims Ellis does not love her, Jules slaps Rue. After she later learns of Rue's death, Jules mourns Rue by painting a picture of her.
Christopher "Chris" McKay is a young football player and Cassie's ex-boyfriend, who is having difficulties adjusting to college. He is hazed by his fraternity brothers at a party and ends up getting Cassie pregnant, which leads to her having an abortion. Struggling with the problems in his life, Chris eventually breaks up with Cassie.
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Cassandra "Cassie" Jacobs (née Howard) was born on August 16, 2000. She is a sweet and popular girl who enjoys ice skating and is Lexi's older sister. Facing objectification from a young age, as well as her father becoming an addict and leaving her family, has left the need for male validation as her Achilles' heel. She has had multiple past relationships, which often ended in revenge porn. She is Maddy's closest friend and confidant, even having a stronger bond with Maddy than with Lexi. She enters a relationship with McKay, who she later breaks up with after he gets her pregnant, causing her to have an abortion. Seeking comfort, she engages in a secret relationship with Nate in the second season, causing her to lose her sense of self and eventually ruining her friendship with Maddy when the truth comes out. The betrayal causes Cassie to be ostracized, and she isolates herself further. Cassie has a public meltdown in relation to Lexi's school play and Nate ending their relationship. Trying to embrace her self-proclaimed title as "the villain", it leads to further ridicule from her fellow students and a physical altercation with Maddy. In the third season, Cassie is engaged to Nate. While she is unemployed, she dabbles in sexual content creation to earn additional income. Cassie reaches out to Maddy to reconnect and apologizes for her actions in high school. Cassie and Nate later get married, but Cassie becomes involved in Nate's debt to Naz, a dangerous mortuary mogul. Cassie moves out of their home to invest more time working with Maddy to make more content. She later becomes a widow following Nate's death.
Ali Muhammad (né Martin McQueen) is a Gulf War veteran in recovery from substance use disorder who often speaks at Rue's Narcotics Anonymous meetings and eventually becomes her sponsor. In the third season, Ali continues to offer Rue guidance. At the end of the third season, he discovers that Rue had died from an overdose while sleeping on his couch, after the Percocet she had taken was laced with fentanyl. Knowing that Alamo supplied the drug, Ali quits hosting his NA meetings and confronts Alamo, ending in a standoff where Ali kills Alamo and avenges Rue. Some time later, Ali visits the religious family that Rue connected with, informs them of her death, and is invited to dinner. After he joins the family in prayer, Ali has a vision of Rue sitting at the table with them, finally at peace.
Ashtray is Fezco's "little brother" and partner drug dealer; he is about 12 years old. At the end of the second season, he starts a shootout with the police during a raid at Fezco's house and, as a result, is shot in the head and killed by a SWAT team member.
Ethan Daley is introduced as a kind, friendly high schooler who catches feelings for Kat after they meet in class. The two start hanging out, and he becomes her boyfriend. In the second season, Ethan and Kat continue their relationship, but over time, Kat becomes emotionally abusive toward him because of her insecurities, and he reluctantly breaks up with her. Ethan then joins the school theater play production, written and directed by Lexi, and garners praise for his performance in the lead role.
Elliot is a classmate and new friend of Rue's, who forms a rift between her and Jules. He is also a musician and a drug addict.
Alamo Brown is a dangerous yet magnetic strip club magnate and arms dealer who takes Rue under his wing. He begins a feud with Laurie after one of his strippers overdoses on the drugs she supplied. He later meets Maddy and works with her to expand his empire into making content online. At the end of the season, he is shot and killed by Ali in a duel when he raids the Silver Slipper to avenge Rue's death.
Laurie is a former school teacher turned drug dealer who crosses paths with Rue. Unlike her employees, Laurie is calm and soft-spoken; however, she claims to be ruthless when it comes to making her money back. She used to be addicted to OxyContin, and her addiction forced her into prostitution to earn money for drugs to avoid withdrawal. In the third season, Laurie employs Rue against her will as a drug mule to make up for the money Rue owes her for a suitcase of drugs. She finds herself engaged in a feud with a dangerous client, Alamo Brown, after one of his employees dies from a fentanyl overdose and he takes Rue under his wing. Amidst the feud, Brown instructs his enforcer, Bishop, to kill Laurie's beloved pet bird, Paladin. At the end of the third season, Laurie commits suicide and hangs herself to avoid going to prison when her compound is raided by the DEA.
Faye Valentine is introduced as Custer's girlfriend, who stays with Fezco and Ashtray after she becomes wanted by the police for pushing her superintendent off a motel balcony. She is initially presented as a drug addict and a somewhat self-centered airhead who is rude toward Rue after she expresses discomfort over doing heroin; however, she is shown to be kinder and gradually forms a friendship with Fez. After learning her boyfriend is cooperating with the police against Fez, she is conflicted due to her split loyalties. Shortly before the police raid Fez's apartment, Faye signals to Fez to warn him that Custer may be recording their conversation. In the third season, Faye works with Rue as a drug mule for Laurie. She forms a relationship with Wayne, one of Laurie's relatives. Unbeknownst to her, she accidentally contaminates some of the drugs that are sold to local crime boss Alamo, which results in the death of one of his strippers. Her namesake is a reference to the Cowboy Bebop character of the same name.
Wayne is one of Laurie's relatives and a drug dealer. He is also Faye's love interest in the third season.
During the show's pilot episode, the audience is quickly herded into the world of Euphoria by Rue's voice. In her voiceovers, she has intimate knowledge of not just her character, but all other characters — including Jules, Nate, Kat, etc. — throughout different stages of their lives, sharing them as she sees fit.
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