Before Sydney Sweeney got up with “L’Euphorie”, she had a little one but very Memorable role in season 2 of “The Handmaid’s Tale”. His character was Eden, presented as a somewhat naive young girl transformed into a married child. Although a real believer in Gilead originally seeming, the horrible patriarchal society against which June is concentrated on the rebel, Eden quickly becomes disillusioned when she realizes that her new husband will never love him.
She soon falls in love with a young man called Isaac, and decides to have an affair with him rather than settle in a marriageless marriage. The young couple is captured and then executed by the state, in what is perhaps the most depressing sequence of an already dark season in the series.
Sweeney gave his opinion on Eden’s script in a 2018 interview with Refinery29. She explained how, because it was the first season that went beyond the original book on which the show was based, she did not know what was going to happen to Eden:
“I knew she was going to have an end. I didn’t know exactly how it was going to end. There was [the idea of]”Oh, she could eventually run away. They did not know what direction they were going too much in. I just knew there would be an end. When I read episode 12, I was completely shocked. … I shouted on the page [while] by reading. “
In the end, Sweeney was delighted with the way Eden’s fate turned out
“I was glad it was so dark for an end. Because it will strike a lot of people and have a huge impact,” added Sweeney. When asked how she thought that her death would affect the main characters, she replied: “None of them can be the same. He will certainly wear them throughout next season.”
It is difficult to challenge this assertion: the following season was the show perhaps its most angry and the most rebellious. It is also the beginning of an arc for Serena Waterford, a character originally pro-Gilead who seems to be shaken at least of some of his beliefs after looking at the death of Eden. It hurt particularly for Serena since she was close to Eden, and that Eden represented so much what Serena considered the ideal young woman.
But as dark as the scene was in the show itself, behind the scenes, it was a surprisingly light affair for Sweeney: “I am having fun,” she said about jumping in the pool. “I had a good time. I wanted to continue doing it again and again … My mother was also that day. I wanted her to see him in person instead of watching him on television, so it was not as shocking or scary for her.”
