‘Euphoria’ Star Reveals He Was High on Shrooms During Audition and Lost the Role

Dominic Fike didn’t exactly nail his first round of Euphoria auditions. The 26-year-old, who plays Elliot on the hit HBO series, revealed in a new interview with GQ that his audition with series regular Barbie Ferreira went off the rails when he took a bunch of ‘shrooms before the reading. Despite the series focusing on a drug-addicted teenager, Fike’s own take on method acting didn’t exactly go over well.

“I started peaking right when me and Barbie were reading,” he told the magazine, recalling getting feedback from his agents afterward: “They were like, What. The. F-,” Fike remembered. During the audition gone wrong, Fike said he was looking at the show’s creator Sam Levinson and being convinced he was wearing a dress. “I looked at him and I was like, ‘Are you wearing a dress right now?’ It was crazy. I started making fun of everybody in the room,” he admitted.

It wasn’t a shock that Fike didn’t get the part, but after he spent time in rehab in spring 2020, he got another call from casting directors, and he soon found himself the new kid at Euphoria High. Fike admits it “was very intimidating” joining the cast at first. “Zendaya, it’s just crazy seeing her in real life. You see her in f-ing movies and s-, and I’m like, ‘Oh, s-, that’s Spider-Man’s girl, dog!’” Fike told the magazine. “And then Tom Holland would show up to set and kiss her on the mouth, and I’m just here like, ‘This is wild!’”

Fike has been through a lot while trying to produce his debut album, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?. “I was going through so much then, and I was heavily addicted to so many drugs,” he shared. “Trying to make a f-ing album in the midst of that much pressure, the drugs, my family being insane, and me being insane, was impossible.”

When asked if he ever was concerned about getting overexposed, Fike responded, “No, I’m trying to go crazy. I’m trying to be like Lindsay Lohan. I’m trying to be annoyed at paparazzi and s-… I’m not even kidding.” He continued, “I’m trying to get, like, annoying famous… I just think it’d be dope… I want those iconic pictures from back in the day. The cool stories. The f-ed-up knees from all the ecstasy. You know? I want all of it.”