After working on the set of movies like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, Davy learned that most directors want the actors' makeup to be felt, not seen. It could be natural, gritty, and raw, but it can't be bright and fun. But Euphoria's creator Sam Levinson watches YouTube beauty tutorials for his own enjoyment. "Sam is obsessed with makeup and knows all the terminology, which was really a shock," she says. "So he was like, 'Go off.'"

With this simple directive, Davy ended up creating innumerable looks for the first season of Euphoria. Every time you see characters like Jules, Maddy, and Kat in a new outfit, their makeup looks different, too. "It was the opposite approach from what typical makeup departments use for television," Davy explains. "Usually, so-and-so has their everyday look, and that's just their look. This was completely different because Sam wanted the makeup to be its own full expression of what was going on with the characters. If they're experiencing different emotions and circumstances in all these scenes, then the makeup had to be different."

Keep scrolling for a deeper look into the standout Euphoria characters' relationships with makeup and how Davy brings each to life.

Maddy

Makeup for Alexa Demie's character, Maddy, is performative. She's a former pageant princess who coordinates her look from head to toe. Her outfits always match her makeup, which matches her nails. Even though she doesn't compete anymore, the halls of her high school are her stage. Having sex is also a chance for her to shine. She doesn't watch porn; she studies it. And her beloved gems that circle her eyes and razor-sharp winged liner come off for no one. Everything she does is polished, calculated, fierce, and confident. Until she's not.

In episode 5, Maddy's façade falls away. She's seen without makeup for the first time. Those scenes in her raw moments show that Maddy is "a real teen going through real pain," Davy says. "Just because she looks the most together doesn't mean she is. Showing her completely broken down without her wall of beauty she puts up was really important in conveying the emotional truths that are Maddie and what make her as equally deep, complex, and relatable as the other characters." Of course, Davy's team didn't just not put makeup on Maddy. They played up the texture of her skin and deliberately made her look, well, rough.