Kayla Jade is not exactly brimming with euphoria over Euphoria's portrayal of sex work, particularly as depicted through Sydney Sweeney's character, Cassie, in season three. In a recent TikTok, the influencer and sex worker shared her thoughts on the series, where Cassie leverages her OnlyFans account to help pay off her husband, Nate's (Jacob Elordi), debts.
"I just don't understand the love-hate relationship people have towards sex work (SW) on shows like Euphoria," Jade began. "It's great to see them represented as real people who happen to be workers." However, she takes issue with how Euphoria depicts Cassie, stating, "When you show them having zero boundaries and willing to do anything for a bit of money, it just reinforces those negative views towards SW."
One episode saw Sweeney's character dressed up like a dog for a photoshoot, followed by another in a see-through babydoll dress and sucking on a pacifier. But as Jade noted, she and other sex workers would never "encourage that type of behavior." "The vast majority would tell that guy to f off and probably report him," the TikToker explained. "If anything, it's just made us more aware, and we can clock a creep pretty quickly."
Building a business as a sex worker, like Jade has done, is no easy feat. She's had to rebuild her profiles after they were taken down. "But these big production companies can profit off the most toxic, exploitative version of it, with none of the risks that real-life SWs have to deal with," she continued. "It just sucks that that show is kind of obsessed with sex workers, but only in a way that dehumanizes them."
Jade wasn't alone in her criticism of the series. OnlyFans creator Sydney Leathers also took issue with Cassie's storyline, particularly her dressing up as a baby. "There's just a lot that's ridiculous and cartoonish about it," she told Variety in an interview published on May 10. "There's so much that they have her doing that is not even allowed on OnlyFans."
As for Sweeney, while the 28-year-old hasn't addressed the criticism of her character, she has appreciated some of the acting challenges she's gotten to take on while playing Cassie, most recently as "Cassie-zilla." During a particularly explicit scene on the May 10 episode, Sweeney's character became a giant, Godzilla-sized woman, stomping through a version of Los Angeles made through miniatures. "The 'Cassie-zilla' sequence was probably the coolest thing I've done," Sweeney said in a behind-the-scenes video shared on May 12. "The details were unbelievable. There were trees and cars and the buildings were my size."
