Sydney Sweeney's First R-Rated HBO Thriller Was Better Than Euphoria

Published Oct 14, 2026, 12:30 PM EDT

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.

While Euphoria might have been an introduction to Sydney Sweeney for many viewers, the show wasn’t her best HBO series, and it wasn’t even her best R-rated thriller for the cable network. Although the Game of Thrones franchise featured a lot of full-frontal nudity throughout the original show’s run, viewers were still struck by just how explicit HBO’s high school thriller Euphoria was when the series premiered in 2019.

With plentiful nudity, graphic sexual content, constant hard drug use, and some of the most inventive swearing ever heard on HBO, the show proved that cable networks could still produce content that was just as daring as Prime Video’s The Boys, which premiered the same year. Of course, Euphoria’s buzzy popularity wasn’t derived entirely from its shocking, boundary-pushing adult elements. The series also had one of the most impressive casts ever assembled.

While Zendaya was already an emerging star by the time the HBO show premiered, Euphoria put future A-listers like Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi, and Hunter Schafer on the map. With supporting stars like Alexa Demie, Storm Reid, and Maude Apatow, as well as Resident Evil 2026’s blockbuster star Austin Abrams, the show was a veritable proving ground for young Hollywood talent. However, it is worth noting that Euphoria wasn’t Sweeney’s first R-rated HBO thriller, and isn’t her best. That honor goes to 2018’s Sharp Objects.

Sharp Objects Is One of HBO’s Greatest Thrillers Ever

Based on the 2006 debut novel of the same name by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects is a dark, gruesome slice of Southern Gothic from the late Big Little Lies director Jean-Marc Vallée. The show follows Amy Adams’ troubled reporter Camille Preaker as she reluctantly returns to her small hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, to report on a series of murders.

The young teenage girls of Wind Gap are going missing and turning up dismembered at an alarming rate, but Camille is as concerned with her troubling, suppressed memories of growing up in Wind Gap as she is with identifying the culprit. With career-best work from not just Adams, but also a chilling Patricia Clarkson as her image-conscious mother and a haunting Eliza Scanlen as her creepily precocious half-sister, Sharp Objects is an immersive, addictive mystery as disturbing as it is unforgettable.

While Sharp Objects is one of HBO’s best thrillers ever, and one of the best Southern Gothic psychological thrillers alongside 2020’s The Outsider, the show wouldn’t work without Sweeney’s supporting role. The future star plays a small but pivotal part as a character from Camille’s past who haunts her in flashbacks throughout the show. To say more would be to give away too much, but suffice to say, Sweeney’s role is as important is it is fleeting.

Euphoria Couldn’t Sustain Its Hype Throughout The Show’s Three-Season Run

Image courtesy of MovieStillsDb

Sweeney had a similarly vital, and similarly brief, role in Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, and cropped up for a brief cameo in the series finale of Pretty Little Liars during the same year. All of these small but important roles proved the actor had star potential, but Euphoria sadly squandered this same quality with its messy storytelling style.

While Euphoria did give Sweeney the A-list exposure required to green light major movies like Netflix’s upcoming Gundam, the show never lived up to the promise of its explosive early episodes. Endlessly concerned with misleading and shocking viewers, Euphoria ended up prioritizing shock value over character arcs and viral moments over consistent storytelling.

The result was a series that looked slick and expensive, but felt empty in comparison to Sweeney’s earlier shows. Thus, anyone looking for the star’s best HBO thriller would be better off watching Sharp Objects than Euphoria’s tiresome, shapeless three-season run.