He didn’t toe the line.
Warning: Spoilers ahead! Do not proceed unless you’ve watched “Euphoria” Season 3 episode 3, “The Ballad of Paladin.”
The hotly anticipated “Euphoria” wedding between Nate (Jacob Elordi) and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) has a bloody ending – Nate is brutally beaten and maimed on his wedding night, and gets his toe cut off.
“There’s a cutting of a particular body part that my character takes great pleasure in doing,” Jack Topalian exclusively told Page Six, adding that they used a “prosthetic” toe for Elordi.
“The clippers that they gave me have pretty sharp edges. So I had to be really mindful of that, because at one point, I do put it around Jake’s toe.”
The actor had to be careful in the way that he “squeezed” Elordi’s toe with the clippers.
“If I squeezed a little too hard, it would literally cut his toe. But, everything turned out well! There were no mishaps, no accidents,” he explained.
Topalian plays Naz, a shady businessman who is a new Season 3 character. Nate is in debt to him for over half a million dollars, and keeps stalling on paying. Nate is shown having a panic attack before marrying Cassie, as he ignores Naz’s phone calls.
After Nate and Cassie tie the knot, Naz crashes Nate’s wedding reception and informs him that he will be his “worst nightmare.”
Then, on Nate’s wedding night, as he carries his new bride over the threshold, Naz follows through on that promise.
He’s waiting in their mansion, and sics a henchman on Nate to brutalize him as a horrified Cassie cries. Naz then proceeds to cut off Nate’s toe.
Naz’s henchman was played by former NFL player and Super Bowl champ Matt Willig.
“What a gem of a person he is,” Topalian, who was also in “The Blacklist” and “Bosch,” said. “He’s an amazing actor as well. So, he ends up doing all the dirty work… [My character is] the kind of guy where I’m not going to get my hands dirty – but, I’m going to get my money, one way or another.”
Filming that sequence lasted for “a few days” as Naz’s henchman throws Nate around, smashing his face into walls, beating him up, and dragging him up and down his grand staircase.
“There’s a lot of physicality involved with Jacob and Matthew. Jacob did a lot of his own stunts,” Topalian told us. “That’s [Elordi] really doing the struggling and the fighting and the falling and all of that.”
Even though it’s a brutal sequence, the atmosphere was light behind the scenes.
He called Elordi “committed,” “giving,” and “prepared,” but “between scenes, he’s back to being Jacob.”
“Obviously, he gets back into character really quickly,” he went on. “But once [the director calls ‘cut’] even though he’s been beaten and abused, he’s still having a lot of fun. He’s still cracking jokes and doing things like that.”
Topalian said he brought his daughter Elizabeth to the set, who is a “Euphoria” fan. Elordi and Sweeney were both very “warm” and “gracious and welcoming” to her.
“Euphoria” Season 3 airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.