‘Euphoria’ star Angus Cloud dead at 25
'Angus was open about his battle with mental health, and we hope that his passing can be a reminder to others that they are not alone,' his family said in a statement
By Kory Grow
Angus Cloud, who played the slow-talking, big-hearted Fezco on Euphoria, died Monday. He was 25.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, the Oakland Police Department confirmed Cloud’s death just after 11:30 a.m. on Monday, and said he was pronounced dead at the scene. Officials did not specify a cause of death and said this is an active death investigation.
“It is with the heaviest heart that we had to say goodbye to an incredible human today,” Cloud’s family wrote in a statement to Rolling Stone. “As an artist, a friend, a brother and a son, Angus was special to all of us in so many ways.
“Last week he buried his father and intensely struggled with this loss,” the statement continued. “The only comfort we have is knowing Angus is now reunited with his dad, who was his best friend. Angus was open about his battle with mental health, and we hope that his passing can be a reminder to others that they are not alone and should not fight this on their own in silence.”
On Euphoria, Cloud played a sweet and protective drug dealer who was a close friend and confidante to Rue Bennett, the show’s main character, played by Zendaya. His unusual way of speaking and the way he looked out for his adopted little brother, Ashtray, and Rue, made him one of the series’ most beloved characters.
The actor, who was born Conor Angus Cloud Hickey to Irish parents in Oakland, California, on July 10, 1998, had only started accruing acting credits in the past few years. He attended the Oakland School for the Arts, where castmate Zendaya was also a student. He got his big break in 2018, a couple of years after he’d moved to Brooklyn on a whim when a Euphoria representative approached him and asked him to audition. “I was confused, and I didn’t want to give her my phone number,” he recalled in a GQ interview. “I thought it was a scam.”
Jennifer Venditti, the Euphoria casting scout who spotted Cloud, explained why she wanted to work with him in an interview with Variety. “He was not what you would expect,” she said. “He has this rough, street quality about him, but he’s a very sensitive and curious and open person. Just really warm and incredible on camera. Very charming and told incredible, funny stories.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said he’d had an unusual experience with learning how to act. “I went over down to South Central or something like that, and Shia Labeouf, he was running an acting class for free out of this school’s stadium,” he recalled. “So I went over there to see what they were talking about.”
And while fans immediately fell in love with Cloud both on and off screen, in the same interview with Rolling Stone, he admitted that he struggled to watch himself on TV for the first time. “[The] first time I watched myself on TV, I didn’t like it,” he said. “I’m like, ‘What the fuck, I suck at this. Why did they pay me to do that?’”
The success of Euphoria also came as a surprise to the actor. “The difference between me and everyone else who’s famous it’s that they were trying to go get famous, for the most part,” he told i-D. “They were working hard, and they were like, ‘I’m going to make it to the top’. For me, it was just like too good of an opportunity to say no to. I had no idea it would go this far.”
And Cloud was open about his struggle to grasp his own rising fame. “People knowing me and recognizing who I am. That shit fucks with my mind for sure,” he told Interview Magazine in 2022. “I’d rather people didn’t recognize me. I’m not mad at them because they do, but I’d rather they didn’t. I just want to have regular interactions with people. I don’t want to be treated special.”
He later told Variety in 2022 that he rejected fans’ comparisons between him and his Euphoria character, Fez.
“It does bother me when people are like, ‘It must be so easy! You get to go in and be yourself,’” he said at the time. “I’m like, ‘Why don’t you go and do that?’ It’s not that simple. I brought a lot to the character. You can believe what you want. It ain’t got nothing to do with me.”
Outside of Euphoria, he first appeared in a movie called North Hollywood, which came out in 2021. In subsequent years, he appeared in music videos for Juice Wrld’s “Cigarettes” and Becky G and Karol G’s “Mamiii.” He also appeared in the film The Line, which came out last month. Cloud also ran a YouTube channel with videos he directed. In 2022, the actor was named the new face of Polo by Ralph Lauren Fragrances.
Most recently, Cloud had signed to appear in an as-yet-untitled thriller alongside Kathryn Newton and Will Catlett. It is unclear what will become of the project in the wake of Cloud’s death.