With Euphoria finally in production on the long-awaited third season, Barbie Ferreira is addressing the online speculation about her exit from the HBO series.
After announcing her departure in 2022, the actress recently clarified that she “never walked off set,” explaining her decision not to reprise her role as Katherine ‘Kat’ Hernandez in the Sam Levinson series.
“I think instead of me kind of lingering around for nine months, I think it was best for both of us that we just ended it there,” she said on The Viall Files podcast. “Of course it’s hard — I love Euphoria. I love Kat. Kat means the world to me. I spent so many years pouring everything into her, but it’s like, you don’t want to ruin a good thing.”
Ferreira continued, “It was a mutual decision. It was absolutely not just me. Everyone decided that … there was nowhere to go, and that’s hard obviously because I’m like, ‘What am I going to do?’ But again, with acting, things happen all the time and you just have to have thick skin and make the right decisions for you in your career.”
Before Ferreira announced her exit in August 2022, The Daily Beast ran a story about the alleged behind-the-scenes drama during Season 2, with a source claiming the actress stormed off set after a disagreement with Levinson about her character. According to the article, other co-stars also had issues with Levinson and the show.
Sydney Sweeney, Alexa Demie, Barbie Ferreira, Maude Apatow and Zendaya in Season 2 of ‘Euphoria’
HBO
Following the speculation and subsequent online discourse, Ferreira said, “I was really young and it was tough. Obviously there was a lot of discourse about it that wasn’t true, and I’m a person who just kind of lets everything happen.
“It’s a popular show, so people took it out of — I never walked off set,” added Ferreira. “There was never anything like that. That was a whole thing, ‘She did all this,’ and I was like, ‘I absolutely never did that.’ You could ask the hundreds of people that were there every day. Fan theories are crazy, and most of the time they’re not right, but sometimes they are.”
Nearly three years after the Season 2 finale, Season 3 of Euphoria officially went into production in February. The long-delayed shoot also comes after speculation that the show was coming to an end.
