[This story contains spoilers from the third episode of Euphoria season three.]
The first time Darrell Britt-Gibson appeared on our screens, he killed a beloved character on one of the greatest TV shows ever: The Maryland native had joined The Wire in its fourth season as Darius “O-Dog” Hill, a member of the crew backing rising gang leader Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) — and who promptly killed Preston “Bodie” Broadus (J.D. Williams), whom viewers had been following since the pilot.
“People still haven’t forgiven me for that — my own mom has a problem with me for that one,” Britt-Gibson says with a laugh. “Going out in the world in Baltimore, and just in general, people did not like me. It was a very visceral reaction, people not liking me. I was unaware of the magnitude of the show.”
Now 20 years later, Britt-Gibson is back on an HBO hit, again circling various crime underworlds and again spending a lot of time with some OG fan favorites — in this case, no less than the series protagonist. But Britt-Gibson came in well aware of Euphoria’s magnitude. And portraying Bishop, one of the main henchmen to kingpin Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who has taken in Rue (Zendaya) as his newest recruit, the actor has given viewers far less reason to be angry with him. Unless you were big fans of rival drug lord Laurie, since episode three ends with him killing her prized bird, Paladin, on Alamo’s behalf in an escalating turf-revenge war.
Otherwise, Bishop is one of several mysteries circling the season. “I don’t like to give away other people’s secrets —when people tell me something, it stays with me,” Britt-Gibson says. “This show and everything that we’ve done, it’s like somebody was telling me a gigantic secret, and I’m telling everybody involved, ‘Your secret is safe with me.’” In conversation about the first three episodes of Euphoria’s third season and what’s to come, we tried to pry at least a few.
How was Bishop pitched to you and what excited you about him?
I had just come off of an intense, whirlwind promotion for the film that I wrote and starred, and She Taught Love. We were fighting so hard for people to see this movie, and for every door that was open three were closed, so I found myself at a moment where I had told the people around me that I just didn’t want to act for a beat. I wanted to just sit down and breathe and just come back to myself a little bit. And then this audition for Euphoria came in…. I look at auditions as practice, like I’m going to go to the gym, putting some shots up, and then letting it be what it is.
I sent in this tape, and then…a couple weeks or a month later, they were like, “Sam loved your tape. He wants to meet.” I’m thinking, “This is actually going further than I thought it was going to go.” We do this Zoom and it’s my first time getting to meet Sam. I was just telling him about how amazing the world that he had created is. It was about, probably — it felt like three months later, and I could be wrong, but it was somewhere in the one to three month range, where they were like, “Hey, so the initial role that you read for, they wanted to age that up, but Sam loves you so much and he wants to craft this character with you.” I was like, really?
So what went into that — how did you craft Bishop with Sam? What ideas did you bring to the table?
He was sort of pitching me who this character was. I remember having ideas about what I thought that this character could be. A lot of times as an actor, if you have thoughts, you’re preparing yourself for the creator to be like, “Well, that’s not how I see it. This is what it should be. This is how we want it to be done, do that.” But every idea that I pitched to Sam, he loved it — every one. He actually believes in the collaboration.
For me it just was sort of like, “What does this character do? How does he function in this world? What’s his purpose in it?” One of the ideas I brought was the beads that I carried, and then it was the stillness with which he operates. And my hair — this is my real hair, and I was like, “I’ve never really had my hair out like this.” He was like, “Love it, love it, love it.” He gave me the real estate to find it. And then his genius is that he’s going to go make a whole bunch of stuff with these ideas that you present.
Bishop can be really hard to read sometimes, and the energy is not what you expect. It seems core to your way into the guy, right?
Yeah. So I studied samurais. I studied a lot of monks. And I also watched a lot of cartoons. How do you stay present in your stillness? Cartoons are a great example. Let’s say The Simpsons: Let’s say there’s a scene where you’ve got Homer, Marge, Maggie, Bart, and Lisa. And if lHomer is speaking in that scene, if you watch the scene, are you watching everybody else or are you only paying attention to Homer? I’m like, “Are they breathing? Are they blinking? Do they move? Are they still?”
Then one of the bigger inspirations for me for this role in addition to those things was Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. The presence with which he commanded everything without having to say a lot; you always knew he was there. That’s what I really wanted to play with this character. For actors, sometimes we feel like we need to be saying a lot of things — “I’ve got to cry” or “I have to have this monologue.” I’m always fascinated by the most quiet person in every room — if I go into a room and everybody’s talking, I see one person who’s very quiet. That’s the story that I really want to know more about. He’s the onion, like when you learn a little bit more every time, but not everything all at once.
So, getting into episode three, Bishop kills Laurie’s beloved bird, Paladin, on behalf of Alamo. Before that, Laurie asks Bishop if he likes animals, and you reply in this kind of mesmerizing tone, “I love them.” He really comes out there!
Bishop doesn’t lie. That was important. He’s been given orders to do a thing, so it’s that weird sort of juxtaposition of, you are being told to do something that goes against what you are and what you believe in. There’s also the duty calls aspect of it, which further deepens the amalgamation of what Bishop is in totality, right? He loves animals — I felt like I believed that — but then he does this thing that he was told to do. It’s asking an audience to ask its own questions about a character.
You’ve had more scenes with Rue than most this season. How would you describe Bishop’s dynamic with her? In this episode he asks her, “Do you have a moral problem with what you’re doing?” in a tone that could also be read a few ways.
It’s almost as if he’s a master interrogator. He wants to know somebody’s true intentions, and I think that he can see through people, around people, over people and behind them. And I think with Rue, because she is so layered and nuanced and multifaceted, he is very curious about her true intentions. Him asking a question like that, he’s not asking it to be a bully; he really wants to know. How she would answer that question informs what he would start to build foundationally about what he believes this person is here for. He’s going to ask you a real question and he’s going to expect a real answer, and if you don’t give him a real answer, he’s going to know you’re lying to him.
What’s it like to play in those shades opposite Zendaya?
She’s an incredibly giving scene partner, and I think at that level — the global superstar that she is — you just don’t know what you’ll get. It’s really hard to explain. I almost feel like I wish everybody could work with her to understand what I mean by how giving she is and how funny she is and how professional she is. Some people are number one on the call sheet, and then there are people who are like, “Oh yeah, you are supposed to be the number one on the call sheet.” It’s being able to dance with her. Iron sharpens iron, and working with her epitomizes that statement.
You’ve been on all kinds of TV shows over the years: Barry, Californication, Power, You’re the Worst. What makes Euphoria unique on set?
When you show up to work with Sam, he’s going to give you everything he has and that makes you want to give everything that you have. Every detail matters to him: where the camera turns just a little bit, and maybe you’re sitting there like, “I wonder why.” Then you see it and you’re like, “Oh, that’s so crazy.” From the naked eye, you’re like, “A light kind of looks the same,” but then you see the difference and you’re like, “This dude is out of this world.” Some people are just born to be directors and writers, and he’s born to do the thing.
I wanted to close by asking you a little bit about your first screen job on The Wire, another HBO drama. You were talking earlier about fan reaction to your role on that show: Anything you learned there that relates to Euphoria?
You can only be that invested in something if you’re that invested in the characters. David Simon, Sam Levinson — these are the creators of these characters that people get so invested in that they have these visceral reactions to them. In Hollywood, we’re in the world-building business, and sometimes you can be so focused on building a world that you forget that that world needs characters to inhabit that world and they build from the inside out. It’s character-first. That is why people can be so invested in a way that they see you on the street and they are angry 15, 20 years later for something that you did on a television show.
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