Dismembered and Buried Alive: Jacob Elordi Details 'Six Weeks' of 'Torture' on the Euphoria Set

For viewers, the last season of Euphoria was already a brutal watch, but according to Jacob Elordi, filming it in Los Angeles was something else entirely. The Australian actor told Jimmy Kimmel Live this week that shooting the third and final season of the HBO drama felt like 'six weeks' of 'torture,' as his character Nate Jacobs was chased, beaten, dismembered and finally buried alive on screen.

The controversial teen series created by Sam Levinson wrapped up its third season with a run of episodes that pushed its characters, and clearly some of its cast, to extremes. Elordi's Nate, a violent high-school jock whose storyline has anchored the show since 2019, became one of the central lightning rods for the final episodes, which divided fans and critics over their intensity and graphic content.

Jacob Elordi's Brutal 'Euphoria' Shoot

The news came after Elordi appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where his Euphoria co-star Colman Domingo was guest-hosting in place of Kimmel. With Domingo steering the conversation, it did not take long for the pair to wander back to East Highland and the question of how the final season was made.

Elordi quipped on air that he is 'convinced' Sam Levinson only brought Euphoria back for a last run 'to torture me,' before getting into the grim detail of what that actually meant on set. His character's final arc plays out like a horror film within a teen drama, and Elordi said that reality was not far off during production.

'It was like, six weeks of me just getting beat by a seven-foot guy. I was just running the whole time,' he recalled, describing a run of stunt-heavy days in which Nate is relentlessly hunted and attacked over multiple episodes. That storyline culminates in one of the show's most disturbing sequences, where Nate is mutilated, stuffed into a coffin and buried alive with snakes for company, a twist that left sections of the fandom stunned and, in some cases, furious.

Elordi said the coffin sequence was particularly punishing. 'I got locked in a coffin for two days straight with prosthetics and a fake tongue, and I couldn't see out of my eyes. And then Sam put snakes into the coffin,' he told the late-night audience.

There is no suggestion Elordi was actually in danger, but his description underlines how physically demanding the final stretch of filming became. Being sealed in a confined box, layered under prosthetic make-up and sharing the space with live reptiles is the sort of method-adjacent stuff that actors tend not to romanticise once the cameras stop rolling.

Why Jacob Elordi Still Calls Nate's Death 'Cool'

To recall, Nate's death closed the book on one of Euphoria's most divisive figures. Over three seasons, the character's mix of trauma, misogyny and cruelty made him a focal point of online debate, with some viewers arguing his actions were irredeemable and others insisting the writing was critiquing exactly that behaviour.

Despite calling the production 'torture,' Elordi has been surprisingly upbeat about where Nate ends up. Speaking previously about that final coffin scene, he said he thought it was a 'cool way to go' and suggested the ending felt earned rather than gratuitous.

'Nate is someone who's made so many mistakes and made so many dark choices, it's cool to see it all come to what it's come to,' he said at the time. It is a telling choice of words, that 'cool,' given his later admission that playing out the character's final days required weeks of physical battering and claustrophobic shooting.

If anything, it speaks to an odd tension that has always sat at the heart of Euphoria. The show chases heightened, often shocking visual moments, yet its cast are asked to ground those scenes in something resembling human consequence. Elordi's comments hint at how heavily that can sit on one performer's shoulders when the script calls for dismemberment and burial.

A Final Season That Refused To Look Away

For starters, the third season of Euphoria did not stop at one bleak farewell. Just a week after Nate's death episode aired, the series finale killed off another central character. Zendaya's Rue Bennett, whose struggle with addiction framed the entire show, overdosed on fentanyl in her final chapter after years of wrestling with substance abuse.

It was an ending that some viewers saw as tragically honest and others as needlessly devastating. Either way, it underlined Levinson's refusal to soften the world he had built, even as questions swirled online about how far Euphoria should go in depicting teenage self-destruction.

The production has not publicly responded to Elordi's latest comments about the intensity of the shoot. HBO has continued to promote the series as a bold, unflinching look at adolescence, and all three seasons of Euphoria are currently streaming on Now and HBO Max in the UK. For the studio, the snakes and coffins are probably just part of the selling point.

For Elordi, now also known for roles in Wuthering Heights and other prestige projects, Nate's wild send-off may well become one of those industry war stories actors dine out on for years, half-laughing as they remember just how far a TV show pushed them. Although, six weeks of beatings and a coffin full of reptiles is the kind of thing that sounds mad even in Hollywood.