When Euphoria hit HBO in 2019, one of the most striking features about the show was the visual elements. Glitter makeup, neon lights, hazy atmosphere- all of this laid down the base for it’s cultural impact and how it gained it’s popularity, but as Sam Levinson got the credit for that, it was someone else’s work entirely.
Petra Collins, the Canadian photographer who has worked with Olivia Rodrigo on three of her biggest hits, the latest being drop dead, Rodrigo’s latest single. She is known for her visual imagery, and by the mid-2010s, she had developed a visual language so distinctive that it became the defining aesthetic of the social media era: soft, hazy, intimate portraits of young faces bathed in pastel-colored lights, often with glitter tears streaming down cheeks.
When Sam Levinson started developing Euphoria, he apparently knew exactly where to look for inspiration. In a January 2023 interview, Collins claimed that Levinson reached out to the agency that represents her and explained that he had written a series he’d like her to direct given it was inspired by her photographs.
Why didn’t Petra Collins direct Euphoria then?
Collins packed her life into suitcases and moved to Los Angeles with genuine excitement. She created a whole world for it and at the last minute HBO told her she was too young to direct.
Speaking to Punkt about her work on the show, Collins stated,
“I created a whole world for it, did the casting, whatever. [And at] the last minute, HBO was like, ‘We are not hiring you because you are too young. A year later, I walked out of my apartment and saw this billboard [advertising Euphoria], and it’s exactly what I am, as a copy of my work. I started crying. I was so shocked. I mean, it happens to me so many times in my career but not on a scale like that.”
It wasn’t until January 2023 that she gave an interview to Punkt where she finally told her story and the internet erupted as the allegations spread across social media but notably, neither HBO nor Levinson ever responded directly.
She also talked about how she had to change her style because of Euphoria as lots of people started to take photos in that style and she felt disconnected from that. The very aesthetic she’d spent a decade perfecting, the one that was supposed to be her signature, became so mainstream, so associated with Euphoria, that Collins couldn’t claim it anymore.
With the release of the show’s third season, many have started talking about how the show has completely deviated from it’s original aesthetics, and now feels like a completely different show, mostly Breaking Bad as it changes aesthetics that many fans have grown a dislike towards, and are now comparing season 1 with season 3.
The conversation Collins forced into the mainstream raises questions that are bigger than one show or one artist: Who gets credit? Who gets compensated? And how many times will the industry steal from women and call it inspiration?
Euphoria is streaming on HBO.
Edited by Nibir Konwar