Watch: Angus Cloud ('Euphoria's' Fezco) Gets Playful with Jacob Elordi
(Note: the following contains spoilers for Episode One of the second season of "Euphoria" on HBO Max.)
On the first episode of "Euphoria," a New Year's Eve party is disrupted — right at midnight — by a violent outburst by the drug-dealing Fezco (Angus Cloud) aimed at Nate (Jacob Elordi). There was bad blood between the two after Nate attempted to have Fezco arrested last season; in turn, Fezco threatened to kill him.
At the party, Nate baits Fezco with, "The last time I saw you, didn't you say you wanted to kill me?"
Moments later, Fezco breaks a bottle over Nate's head, then savagely beats him.
Perhaps to mitigate the scene's intensity, Cloud posted a series of IGs that showed Elordi and him rehearsing the moment.
"In a clip shared on his Instagram as the episode aired, Cloud and Elordi were seen rehearsing for the scene, with Cloud hitting Elordi with a bottle made of sugar glass," writes the Independent.
Commenting on the post, Elordi joked: "Don't taste like sugar." Sugar glass is a transparent form of sugar that can be moulded into shapes and is often used in place of bottles or windows on screen.
The role of the complicated Nate has raised Elordi's Hollywood status to the point that his trips to the gym have become regularly reported by gossip sites, but Fezco is also something of a fan favorite, reports PopBuzz. "Viewers couldn't get enough of the kind-hearted drug dealer. Not only does he cares deeply about Rue but he also actively wants to help her stay sober."
But while six other "Euphoria" characters had their backstories told on Season One (which, because of COVID, aired nearly two and a half years ago), Fezco's wasn't amongst them. One reason, he explained to GQ, was that "I was supposed to die in season 1, bro."
He elaborated: "I guess the character of Fezco was [never meant to stick around]. I don't even know how. I never saw that script. No one ever told me. It was one day when we were filming the pilot that I think Jacob told me, he was like, "Oh yeah, you didn't know? Your character gets [imitates brains getting blown out]." And yeah, it never ended up happening. I think that they liked what I did and so they decided to keep me alive and let me rock. I don't know how I was going out, but hopefully I would've gone out like a G."
Cloud fell into "Euphoria" — and acting — purely by accident. He was walking down a New York City street, he explained in an earlier GQ profile, when a stranger stopped him and explained he would be perfect for a television show she was casting. He was not an actor. At the time he was working at a chicken and waffles joint after moving from Oakland two years earlier. Not that he was unfamiliar with theater — though he "attended the prestigious Oakland School for the Arts (the same performing arts institution attended by his Euphoria costar Zendaya before she jumped ship for a prosperous Disney Channel career), his focus was on technical theater. He spent high school building the sets and lighting the stage for the real actors."
"I was confused and I didn't want to give her my phone number," he says. "I thought it was a scam." But then, later, he later found himself in a nondescript room, filled with very serious people very seriously staring at him as he read lines from what would become 'Euphoria''s first episode. "I had to change it a little bit," he says of the pages he was given. "To make it sound real, like how I would say it."
After a second reading, he got the part and was on a jet to LA for the pilot; then after the series was picked up, he moved for the eight-month shoot. But, he joked, lacking credit, he couldn't get a lease and lived in AirBnBs during his stay. "Nobody was trying to rent me a spot," he says, laughing. "I don't have any credit and they didn't believe I was a real actor."
But now Cloud is, having finished one film and heading out to shoot another. "So we're trying to keep the ball rolling. I love this job. The only part that sucks is that you have to get a new job every time one ends. Acting is... I always have a great time. So I want to keep making cool projects and just keep being a part of just making cool art."
He added that, despite his violent outburst, he gets to explore Fezco's softer side this season. "I'm excited for y'all to see how he kind of comes out of his hard shell a little bit and he kind of exposes his softer side. You see a little bit of his innocence and you see that he's kind of been forced into this life, but he's... What am I trying to say, exactly? He's still a kid like everyone else. He might be a year older, but he had to act like an adult from such a young age. But his inner kid is still in there and you get to see it come out slightly."
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