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"Peeing all over the vestibule of the house, the symbolism there is pretty strong."
Major spoilers for Euphoria Season 2, Episode 4 ahead!!!
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Eric opened up about the intense filming process behind his "epic, dumpster fire" meltdown and using another prosthetic penis for his second nude scene.
Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images
To catch you up to speed (although you should be in the know, since there are SPOILERS): In Episode 3, we got an intimate look at Cal's adolescence and his friends-to-lovers arc with his best friend Derek. After their romance fully blossomed — culminating in a touching first night out at a gay bar in the outskirts of town — Cal finds out his girlfriend, Marsha, is pregnant. As a result, he leaves Derek behind and settles down with Marsha to start a family. Cut to the man we know today: An abusive, overbearing, resentful father.
"I don’t know if it's gonna make people empathetic towards Cal," the Grey's Anatomy alum said of his character's background. "I think it should. But it certainly exposes a side to Cal that you just probably didn’t expect but you knew was possibly, maybe one of the factors in ultimately who he ended up being."
Eddy Chen / HBO
Later on in Episode 3, he goes to confront Fez, who had just beat up his son Nate. Not only does he find out that Fez never had the sex tape of him and Jules (which Nate said was the reason for the fight), but he's also told that Nate is an aggressive abuser who's in love with her. Oh, and he also gets hit repeatedly with the butt of a shotgun by Ashtray.
Which leads us to his Episode 4 unraveling — where Cal stumbles home drunk after being kicked out of the same gay bar he visited with Derek for the first time 25 years ago. While hysterically laughing, he pees in the foyer and begins a tirade against his family, calling them out on their hypocrisy and eventually coming out.
Eddy Chen / HBO
With his penis still out, Cal launches into a four-page monologue that took an entire day to shoot. Eric wore a prosthetic that was fastened with rigs and clamps. "You have got to really be careful with that thing and make sure you clamp it down before you tuck it away," he said.
Eddy Chen / HBO
Of filming the scene, he added that "Sam and the cast were super supportive."
He continued, "From the start, whipping out his penis and peeing all over the vestibule of the house, the symbolism there is pretty strong. And then being confronted by his wife and telling her how lonely he is. That’s a funny way of conveying those feelings to somebody."
Jeff Kravitz / Getty Images for HBO
It's not the first time the 49-year-old actor donned a prosthetic for the dick-heavy HBO show. If you'll recall, the first season saw Cal commit statutory rape against Jules. The "intense" scene required an intimacy coordinator and Eric used a prosthetic, though he was "willing" to be actually nude.
Eddy Chen / HBO
"I’m willing to do anything that’s critical to the story and crucial to creating a very real and truthful feel to how the story is gonna go down,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2019. "I just don’t see how you shoot a scene like that without showing nudity. And, you know, it kind of matches the stakes. The stakes are so high, you can’t hold anything back, really."
"Using a prosthetic is sort of protocol. It’s protocol and it’s also very considerate to your scene partner," he added. "There was one isolated shot that I suggested, 'Look if it makes more sense to not use a prosthetic, I’m willing to go there.'"
Gary Miller / Getty Images for FIJI Water
"At the end of the day, because of the context, we decided that the prosthetic was the way to go, and we came to that decision as a group," he said.
You can catch new episodes of Euphoria on Sundays!
HBO
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