Euphoria star Nika King quips that she needs season 3: "I haven't paid my rent in six months!"
King doesn't know when the next season of Sam Levinson's show will premiere, and she doesn't want you to ask
Much has been made of the Euphoria-to-movie-star pipeline in recent months. It’s hard to remember the last time a week went by without a new trailer, SNL appearance, or casting announcement concerning Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi, or Hunter Schafer. This is to say nothing of Zendaya, who was already well known from the Spider-Man films before signing on to the series but was launched to household-name status almost immediately upon its premiere. (She currently stars opposite Timothée Chalamet in box office phenomenon Dune: Part Two.)
But the cast of the HBO show is a whole lot bigger than its core group of toxic high schoolers, and a lot of its members haven’t seen the same returns as the aforementioned clique. Nika King, who plays Rue’s stalwart mother Leslie, is one of them. “People are like, ‘we need season three!’ Bitch, I need season three,” the actor said during a recent Hollywood Improv Lab show that she subsequently shared on TikTok. “I haven’t paid my rent in six months, and Zendaya’s over in Paris at fashion week. I’m like, ‘bitch, come home! I need you!’”
@iamnikaking Pkease stop asking me about s3 #euphoria #hbo #zendaya #ruemamawildin
While the whole Zendaya bit was clearly meant in jest, King went on to assure audiences that the rest of it was serious. “I haven’t booked nothing since Euphoria. This is some bullshit,” she continued. “I thought my career was on the rise after Euphoria. I thought I was good. It don’t work that way.”
King also shared that she was able to commiserate with Taraji P. Henson, who experienced a similar struggle booking roles after she starred in Empire. “I’ve been doing this for two decades and there were times when I just wanted to quit, because I’m tired of fighting,” Henson said of the endless grind in a December interview with Entertainment Weekly. Luckily, she was able to book a major role in The Color Purple, which premiered at the end of last year. Hopefully, King will experience a similar trajectory.
In the meantime, though, she doesn’t know when season three is coming out, and she’s tired of being asked about it. That makes sense; it sounds like no one really knows. “[Sam Levinson is] a person who writes and rewrites and writes and rewrites again, because I think he’s wrestling with what’s important,” said Colman Domingo, another Euphoria star and current Oscar nominee, in a recent interview with GQ. “He’s responding immediately to what the ills of the world are. I know that the one thing I can tell you is that he’s very much interested in the existential question of who we are right now. Our souls. That’s what he wants to figure out with season three.” In an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Jacob Elordi added that he also doesn’t know when season three is set to begin production, but he “hope[s] it’s soon, or they’re going to have to Benjamin Button me or something. I’m going to have a bad back walking down the hallway, you know?”