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Sam Levinson didn’t care much about high school. This isn’t the kind of thing you’d necessarily expect to hear from the creator of the Emmy-winning blockbuster that was originally set in high school and focused firmly on teenagers.
“I was interested in the emotional state of being young and struggling with addiction, depression, relationships — that stuff.” trance says the model. “We used to get notes from HBO in the first season saying, ‘Should they do more homework?’”
Season three of trance Levinson was offered the opportunity to move beyond adolescence. Production delays led to a four-year gap between the second and third seasons of the drama series, and Levinson, who writes and directs every episode, was prepared for his show to grow — and develop as a live-action storyteller. “I thought if I was going to come back and we were going to get everyone together, I would like to explore what the Wild West is like in adulthood,” he says. “As an audience, we know they no longer have the safety net of being able to go back to their parents’ home. It’s the real world.”
The season’s first scene reintroduces Rue (Zendaya) in her early 20s, smuggling drugs across the Mexico-US divide to pay off a massive debt to a dangerous dealer she’s known since high school. She drives her car up a makeshift ramp over the border fence only for the car to get stuck on top, suspending her in the air — a brave scene inspired by a photo seen in Levinson’s research at DEA headquarters. She has to find her way out. The alternately suspenseful and silly spectacle sets the tone for this new season, which is filled with nods to classic westerns as much as it does screwball comedy.
“The amazing thing about Zendaya as an actress is her physicality… and shooting the movie was great because she’s able to play off the humor and the suspense at the same time,” Levinson says. “I always knew at the beginning of this season that I wanted to do something that really throws us into the middle of the action, but with a certain kind of silliness to it. … It speaks to the larger themes of this season in terms of not only the drugs and the fentanyl crisis and the amount of people we’re losing to it, but also Rue’s life. She’s teetering on the edge. She can go either way: She can figure it all out and live a happy life or she can back off — and it’s over.”
The scene was filmed in the Mojave Desert, and here we also see tranceA refined and retro color palette is in progress. Levinson and director of photography Marcel Reeve mostly left the sound stages that defined the first two seasons for an expanded on-location examination of Southern California, from Lancaster to Long Beach. “I wanted the scope and romance of old-school Technicolor and to have something that felt as saturated and powerful as possible,” Levinson says. “I kept watching movies like North by northwest They wondered, “With all the modern technology, why can’t we get colors like these?” ”
To achieve this, Levinson and Reeve went directly to Kodak and ordered 35mm Ektachrome film. (They initially moved away from digital photography between seasons one and two.) The filmmakers were told that this was not something Kodak produced, which led them to offer to buy a million feet of it. “They said, ‘Maybe we’ll be able to come up with something,'” Levinson said, surprised. Levinson then asked HBO if it could take some wide shots with 65mm cameras. When they finally got yes, he and Rév began pushing the format into close-ups as well—bringing big-screen technology to the most intimate of shows.
“Our dream was to premiere episodes in theaters week to week, which didn’t happen, but hopefully one day we can experience it on a big screen,” Levinson says. “I really wanted to tell an epic story about young adulthood and what it means to be alive now.”
In Levinson’s estimation, that recent photo must look pretty funny. Take, for example, the end of the season’s third episode, which finds Nate (Jacob Elordi) being brutally beaten in his home by shady characters to whom he owes money — on the day of his wedding to Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), no less. As written, you might imagine it reading as disturbing, tense, and action-packed. In fact, that’s what Levinson envisioned. He hired a choreographer, figured out the many complex rhythms of the sequence and began filming it accordingly. In his hotel room that night, Levinson felt suspicious.
“It kept me up all night, thinking, ‘We’ll get ready for the next day,’ and I’ll be like, ‘We’re not doing that.’ John Wick” he says. Then he gets it: The blocking and fight choreography will be the same but move to the background, as the camera lingers on a deluded, self-absorbed Cassie, turning hysterical at the sight of a mere nosebleed. Now it plays like a comedy. “Her husband could literally be beaten to death behind her — and it would still be about her,” says Levinson.
As with the Zendaya-centered premiere sequence, Levinson knows how to push things with his actors; After many years, he can sense what they have to offer and realize how they will fill the missing piece.
“If you push it a little, [Sweeney] “She becomes great — you just have to do a few extra takes, and she can reach these levels that are very emotionally honest but also very funny,” Levinson says. “To know that she can anchor a scene, with this kind of madness and chaos going on around her, is a dream as a director.”
This story first appeared in the June standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To obtain the magazine, click here to subscribe.
