The Dick in the Euphoria Premiere Was Fake, and That’s Fine

Euphoria has promised many things; primarily, an unflinching look at the underbelly of “Gen Z” high school life. But we were also assured there would be dick—30 of them, at that. But is a dick really a dick if it’s a prosthetic?

If you caught last night’s premiere, you might have noticed the instance of full-frontal male nudity amid HBO’s usual complement of bare female breasts, courtesy of Eric Dane, who plays a married man named Cal that Jules finds on an app and later meets in a hotel room. The scene features Cal unhurriedly unwrapping a condom and rolling it onto his erect penis, Jules curled up nervously on the bed behind him. According to an interview with EW, that wasn’t Dane’s real junk. But it could have been!

Series creator Sam Levinson already noted the appendage on display is a prosthetic, which Dane confirms. Though, he says he was up for anything that served the story. “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 reflects. “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.”

Dane says he was willing to bare it all for an isolated shot, but they ultimately used a prosthetic for all scenes. “Using a prosthetic is sort of protocol. It’s protocol and it’s also very considerate to your scene partner,” he elaborates. “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.’ 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.”

What about the other 29 dicks? Will they all be fake, too? Just a forest of prosthetic peen, as far as the eye can see? Does it even matter?

(Updated 3/3/22 with new details)