Mother knows best.
Nika King, the actress who plays Zendaya’s mom in “Euphoria,” seemed to find the humor in her one-line appearance in the most recent episode of the show’s Season 3.
The actress, 47, took to Instagram on Sunday night to claim most of her dialogue had been cut out entirely.
“I just watched the episode that I’ve been promoting all week – and my mom over here is clowning me!” she told the camera while laughing.
King revealed her mother was also laughing at her because “the internet waited all this time for [her] to just say one line.”
Her mom then inaccurately corrected herself and added, “Three years!”
(Fans actually had to wait four years for Season 3, as Season 2 aired in 2022.)
In King’s video, she also turned to talk to her mother, who remained off-screen, “You better be glad I have a sense of humor, you better be glad I’ve got thick skin.”
Page Six has reached out to HBO for comment.
During the episode titled “Stand Still and See,” Rue (Zendaya) has a near-death experience as she narrowly avoids a head-on collision with a truck.
Afterwards, she seeks comfort in a church and calls her mom, Leslie (King), and in a long emotional monologue, tells her that she’s searching for redemption.
However, as King claimed, the camera only shows Rue’s end of the phone conversation until the camera cuts to her mother on the other end.
Leslie simply tells Rue that she loves her before the conversation ends.
This short scene is King’s first time onscreen in “Euphoria” since 2022 — with fans slamming the situation.
“I thought it was so weird to have that conversation be totally one-sided without us able to hear her lines,” one viewer wrote on Reddit, adding that it would have been nice to see Rue’s mom “after not seeing her […] at all this whole season.”
Another fan commented, “I had no idea they filmed the whole conversation, why not keep that in?”
The fan remarked that the episode was “boring” with a lot of “unnecessary scenes they could have cut” if the show needed more room to show Rue’s mother.
Another viewer slammed the show for including other scenes in the episode that seemed pointless, such as “4 minutes of Faye being a Nazi apologist.
“We [definitely] couldn’t have spent any of that time hearing what the main characters mom had to say,” they noted.
King appeared throughout Season 1 and Season 2 of the show, playing a struggling single mom trying to parent her drug-addicted teen daughter.
King previously made headlines for speaking out about her “Euphoria” paycheck during a stand-up comedy set in 2024.
“Season 3 is coming out — I don’t f–king know. Don’t ask me, I don’t know. … ‘We need Season 3!’ Bitch, I need Season 3! I haven’t paid my rent in six months,” she said onstage during an appearance at Hollywood Improv.
She also claimed that she hasn’t booked any roles since “Euphoria” and joked, “And Zendaya’s over in Paris at Fashion Week. I’m like, bitch, come home! I need you! Mama needs you!”
After the clip went viral, King told the Hollywood Reporter that her comments were intended as “a lighthearted joke.”
This is just the latest point of controversy in the third season of “Euphoria.”
Previously, fans and critics had slammed the show for the writing on Jacob Elordi’s Nate, who is wildly out of character in Season 3, and for Sydney Sweeney’s OnlyFans plot.
The artist Labrinth, who was part of the show’s music in its first two seasons, also left the show under unclear circumstances and blasted it, writing, “F–K EUPHORIA” in a since-deleted Instagram post.
“Euphoria” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.
Read the full article here
