Inside Zendaya’s Disney Reunion on ‘Euphoria’ With Kadeem Hardison: “She’s a Little Less Goofy”
[This post contains spoilers for Euphoria season three, episode four.]
A couple of weeks ago, fans quickly caught a sneak reunion taking place in the back rooms of one of Euphoria’s new locations, the strip club where drug lord Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) conducts much of his business — and where he’s assigned Rue (Zendaya) to help oversee operations. Behind closed doors, we meet Big Eddy, secretly trading money and drugs on his boss’s behalf, and he’s played by Kadeem Hardison, who a decade ago was playing the father to Zendaya on a much different kind of show: K.C. Undercover, the Disney Channel hit that platformed one of Zendaya’s breakout star turns as a teenager.
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This past episode saw things ratchet up, with Big Eddy — like Rue — caught between the escalating drug war between Alamo and Laurie (Martha Kelly). A sneak attack from the latter’s henchmen saw Eddy shot in the gut and bleeding out, ultimately providing his boss’s enemies access to the safe for them to steal. It’s a classically tense Euphoria sequence, one that Hardison is still pinching himself for getting to be a part of it — including seeing his former on-screen daughter all grown up. He talks to The Hollywood Reporter all about his Euphoria ride, including an homage to the role with which he made his name more than three decades ago.
What has the past month been like for you?
It’s fun. It’s pretty wild. The kids get really excited and got plenty of opinions.
What are the opinions?
All over the place. They love it, they hate it. “There’s no way Cassie would do this. There’s no way Nate would be like that. Rue’s the only thing that matters.” They’ve got all of them there. I’ve seen all of them. The internet is going absolutely crazy; it’s doing what the internet’s doing.
It’s exciting seeing you and Zendaya back together onscreen. How did you get involved?
Z and I go back to K.C. Undercover, and when we both left there, we were eager to see if we could really act — like, let’s get off a Disney show and get some meat and see if we can still chew. She went to Euphoria and I went to Teenage Bounty Hunters or something like that. She invited me to the premiere, and I remember being wildly uncomfortable watching that as an adult with all these kids. I was like, “Oh my God, is this what happens with the kids now? Is that what the kids are going through? This is crazy!” It introduced me to a world I had no idea existed.
I met Sam [Levinson], visited the set and we had a couple of dinners. He was probably interested in figuring out if we could do something and then boom, next thing you know it happened. I got a call last year, “Hey, come on in and read for you Euphoria.” I was like, “What?”
So you’d been keeping in touch with Zendaya, and she’s the one who introduced you to Sam and all that?
Oh yeah. She had a little Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving dinner and she said, “Come on by.” And she was like, “You’ve got to meet.”
Did they present the role to you specifically, or how did you then get cast?
Straight audition, not even like “we’ve been thinking about” or anything. Just like a regular audition: Here’s an appointment, here’s the time. I read the sides. I got an idea of what they wanted me to do, prepared, went in — and it was a live audition, which I hadn’t had in, Jesus, in years. Casting director in a room, the old school way. Maybe three weeks later they called and said, “We’ve just got to clear it with HBO and clear it with this one and clear it with that one.” It was one read and locked up.
What excited you most about the job?
When I was a kid, we were the first people in our building to have HBO. It was one of my early babysitters from the time I was 12 or 13 years old, and I always wanted to be on HBO — and time was ticking (Laughs). I was like, “Damn, I don’t know if I’m ever being on an HBO show.” So this was a no-brainer, especially if I was going to get a chance to be in scenes with Z. From the sides I was like, “Well, I’m hoping this is her that I’m talking to.”
I was into it. I didn’t know if this guy was going to live or die. He’s in a dangerous little thing here. He doesn’t seem like the nicest guy that ended up doing nice things. So I’m absolutely 100 percent in.
You’ve had such a long career and have been on so many shows. That’s wild that this is your first HBO role.
Netflix, Amazon, all of them — I’ve been around on the block, and never HBO. And HBO was when it all started for me, literally when I was 12, it was my babysitter.
So you worked with Zendaya a decade ago. What do you remember about her then and how did that compare with seeing her in action here?
For lack of a better phrase, she’s still the same guy. She’s always been that person and she’s always been a boss. I was really impressed with how much of a boss she was when I met her when she was 16 or 17. I was impressed that she was the executive producer on the show we were doing then — and so, to turn around and find out she’s still operating in that capacity and just kind of expanded it to films and everything else? Yeah. She’s a little less goofy — a little less goofy. As a kid, she was pretty goofy and we would kid each other a lot and now she’s matured a little bit. But she has her goofy side. I call her my little big sister — the more mature one between the two of us, but I’m the older one.
It’s a much more dramatically intense role, obviously. She’s really great just in this past episode, which you have a lot to do with her in.
She shocks me every time. I knew she was good when we were doing K.C., but I didn’t know she had that kind of depth to go to — and she didn’t know I had it either. It was like, “Shit, I’ve got to catch up because she’s running away with it.” She’s really one of my favorite actors to watch, especially since I know her and know that she’s not really Rue and she wasn’t really K.C. Her instincts are top-notch.
There’s a lot going on with Big Eddy in this episode. You get shot, ultimately. What do you remember about the filming of it?
My first day on set was the last couple of days of January, and we spent about two weeks or maybe more in the strip club. All of the strip club stuff was shot out of order and right then in the first two weeks. We did everything from my introduction to what you saw last week to anything that happens in the strip club that you may see coming up in the future. All of that stuff [in episode four] was shot that first week.
Sam came in that day. Him and Marcel, his DP, they work so well together; they’re like Laurel and Hardy in the best possible way. Sam came in and he just started staring at the floor and looking around. He had something on his mind and he said, “Hey, what if we do this all in a one-er?” Everybody got quiet, and then Marcel was like, “It would take some time.” He was like, “Yeah, let’s do that. Everybody take an hour.” We all broke out and went back the trailers and they set up this whole singular shot where he wanted to see me, Z and Rosalia arguing — and at the same time, you see the guys coming in behind us that we couldn’t see through the windows that I’m supposed to be monitoring. The audience could be aware of something that we weren’t aware of.
The blood and all of that, the screaming — it got intense in there. We did a whole bunch of stuff that I don’t think made it, but just to give us the attitude, just to give us the space to get up to speed. We tried a whole bunch of things and I’m happy with what made it in. It was a tough day, a lot of sitting in a pile of blood, but I was smiling every day. I walked off that set like, “I’m doing an HBO show and I’m bleeding out and I might be dead.” I don’t get my scenes until maybe two days before, so I don’t know what’s happening with any other character and I don’t even know what’s happening with me until I get the pages and then try to decipher and then maybe have to ask Sam for context. Then he’ll talk to you for 25 minutes. (Laughs.)
I always wonder what it’s like when you’ve got a day like that where you’re covered in blood and have to re-run takes, or just wait between setups.
You just get soaked! And you’re just sitting, there’s nowhere to go. You can’t really move. You’re dragging all over the place and then everybody’s got to clean up behind you. I think we did probably two takes. We did it once and then we had to clean up and then we had to come back. We had another sweatsuit and we had to do it again. But it was great to agonize, to be in that situation — that’s why you want to be an actor, is to act out the things you really don’t ever have to hopefully ever have to do in real life.
When Eddy flips up his shades, it’s a nod to your role in A Different World, right?
One hundred percent. I’ve got these glasses that I collaborated on with Vontelle, a Black female-owned eyewear business. A couple of years ago, I decided — and man, I should have done it 35 years ago — “Let’s get some flip-up glasses out there in the market and see what’s happening.” We made them and they’re a nice little hit for us, and I asked Sam if I could wear ‘em and he loved him. He was like, “Absolutely. And hey, flip ‘em up when you turn around, when we call you.” I was like, “Yeah, man, let’s go.” Definitely a nod to Dwayne. I was thrilled that he was thrilled to let me work him into the character.
Your connections to HBO, to Zendaya, to A Different World — a lot came full circle for you with this role, it sounds like.
Absolutely. I tell all my actors, “Hey, just keep swinging. The next hit is right around the corner. Don’t stop. And as long as you stay in the game, you won’t be out.”
**
Euphoria airs Sundays at 6 p.m. PT on HBO Max.
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