It’s difficult to join a show that is three seasons in and make the kind of impact that stirs up conversation, but Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje makes it look easy with his riveting performance as Silver Slipper proprietor and self-proclaimed cowboy, Alamo Brown, in Euphoria‘s final season.
The head of a strip club empire, Alamo Brown strikes up a deal with protagonist Rue Bennett (Zendaya) at the start of the season, only for both of their fates to take deadly turns. As fans will recall, Rue worries that she’s signed a deal with the devil upon agreeing to work with the criminal, but by the time the finale rolled around, she let her guard down enough to be tricked into thinking the Percocet pills he gave her were safe.
Laced with fentanyl, just a pill or two was enough to lead to a devastating overdose, leaving her sponsor, Ali (Colman Domingo), to find her dead on his couch. The actions conducted by Alamo were enough to push Ali to take extreme measures, culminating in a noteworthy shootout where Maddy (Alexa Demie) found herself being used as a human shield when Alamo deemed it necessary.
HBO
Luckily for her, Alamo’s right-hand man, Bishop (Darrell Britt-Gibson), betrayed him, removing the bullets from his revolver, leaving him ammo-less for a shootout up against Ali, who had paid a visit to the Silver Slipper, bolting the doors with a bike lock on his way in. “It was fitting for a number of reasons,” Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who is stirring up Emmy buzz, tells TV Insider.
“I was excited to work with Colman. I’ve seen his work on the show, and he’s been terrific,” Akinnuoye-Agbaje compliments his costar. “So that was an exciting prospect to see us going toe to toe. But I think narratively, it was important because both of these characters have somewhat held a mentorship position with regard to Rue. As Akinnuoye-Agbaje puts it, “Ali was like family”, and Alamo Brown was a kind of “mentor.”
Ultimately, Akinnuoye-Agbaje says, “These two father figures or mentors to her were really fighting over her. One for her, the other one against her.” At that point, Ali’s approach with a shotgun seemed like a lost cause until Bishop’s betrayal became clear, giving the more noble man a shot, both literally and figuratively, to rid the world of some evil, which was gradually uncovered, bit by bit, in Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s performance over the season.
While fans may have thought Rue might get out of her predicament, Akinnuoye-Agbaje confirms that it was a doomed journey for her from the beginning. “Letting her go was never gonna be an option for a number of reasons,” he reveals. “One, it could indict him, sooner or later, and two, you know, as we saw in his backstory, he’s somebody who suffers from trauma because of his mother. That betrayal, that corruption of the soul, of the heart that came from his mother, and he then lived by this code that no woman would ever betray me or outsmart me again.”
In the video interview above, Akinnuoye-Agbaje digs into his character’s journey, including his onscreen death, digging into that twisted dynamic with Maddy, fan reactions, and so much more. Watch it here, and catch Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s turn as Alamo in Euphoria anytime on HBO Max.
Euphoria, Streaming now, HBO Max