Martha Kelly reveals unexpected Laurie twist in Euphoria season three, and it’s seriously dark

If you thought Laurie couldn’t get any more terrifying, Euphoria season three just proved otherwise.

When we reunite with Rue years after high school, things are already bleak. She’s working as a drug mule for Laurie, running product across the Mexican-American border for her former dealer. It’s a chilling storyline that shows just how deep Laurie’s grip goes.

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Laurie suddenly claims Rue owes her a wildly inflated sum for the $10,000 stash Rue’s mum flushed back in season two, a debt that’s ballooned thanks to ruthless “compound interest”.

Eventually, she drops it to $100,000, but the message is clear: Rue is trapped. What follows is less a deal and more a form of modern-day servitude, with Rue forced to work off a debt that was never realistically hers to begin with.

It’s this quiet, calculated cruelty that makes Laurie one of Euphoria’s most unsettling characters, and according to Martha Kelly, that was never the obvious direction for her.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Kelly admitted she initially wasn’t sure about stepping into such a dark role.

“I’m a comedic actor, which means you have to have people like you for them to want to watch you,” she said. “I can’t play this awful monster and who’s who hurts kids.

“I always read all of [Laurie’s] lines as a snake-in-the-grass sociopath. Those are the scariest people, the mild-mannered person who has no conscience and no line they won’t cross to get what they want.”

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Season two never fully explained how Laurie climbed to the top of the drug hierarchy, leaving us to imagine just how far she’s gone. Season three is set to dig deeper, with Kelly teasing “a different part of her life with a nemesis”.

HBO

Interestingly, this time around, Laurie isn’t just terrifying, she’s also messier. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Kelly hinted that season three leans into Laurie’s flaws in a way we haven’t seen before.

“Season two was just this menacing, terrible woman… And then season three, it’s like, Laurie: you’ve done it again, you nincompoop! You made another miscalculation. And that is much more fun.”

Kelly even suggests Laurie’s decisions, like trusting Rue with a suitcase full of drugs, come from a warped mix of bravado and instability.

“My impression of Laurie is that she’s on drugs, and she has more bravado than actual competence in some ways. Laurie is somewhat attached to Rue; I think she thinks she cares about her… Laurie, something’s wrong with her. She’s maybe a sociopath.”

If anything, it sounds like we’re about to see a more unpredictable, and possibly more dangerous, version of Laurie. For Rue, that’s seriously bad news.

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Featured image credit: HBO