admin Long before he wooed Maude Apatow in Euphoria, or acted alongside Pete Davidson in The Things They Carried, Angus Cloud was a friend and collaborator of Mikey Alfred, writer, producer, and creator of the controversial skate brand Illegal Civ, aka IC. They met in 2018 at the premier for Mid 90s—Jonah Hill’s directorial debut, produced by Alfred, starring team IC, and featuring the Santa Monica Courthouse (where the premier was).
Angus, then 20 and still undiscovered, already knew the local skaters, including some of Mikey’s crew. They kept in touch. Angus would soon land the role of warm-hearted drug dealer Fez in Euphoria; interviews quickly revealed Angus was so much like the fan-favorite character he played on TV: deliberate with his words, but quick and funny, with a moral compass and huge, piercing eyes.
It was a line blurry enough to inspire Angus to make a TikTok and declare point-blank, “To end the confusion: No—I’m not Fezco.”
Yet in Alfred’s coming-of-age directorial debut North Hollywood, Angus once again found himself playing a character who seemed closer than not to his real life persona. He stars opposite Miranda Cosgrove and pro skater Tyshawn Jones as Walker, a fascinating character who knows the local pro skaters and might have even been one—but now just hangs out, day and night, bottle in hand. Still, with murky eyes and slurred speech, his wise words encapsulate the whole story: “It’s hard to make a job skating out here.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Bc91BnFoc
In his all-too brief acting career, Angus was quite often the heart and soul of any given project. This week, he tragically passed away at the age of 25—the cause of death is still unknown, but a statement from his family mentioned he was taking the recent death of his father quite hard.
GQ reached out to Mikey Alfred, one of Angus’ closest friends and collaborators, to talk about what made Angus such a special presence on the films and TV sets he graced,
his coming-of-age challenges, and how Angus might have played Mac Miller after all.
GQ: How did you hear?
Mikey Alfred: I pulled up to the homey Lester’s house. When I hopped out he showed me his phone. “Oh shit.”
Was the Walker character in North Hollywood written for Angus?
No. Originally we were gonna have a skater play that role, and I have video of pro skaters reading for it. But it just wasn’t clicking. And after we watched all these tapes, I was at Paramount, in (Godfather producer) Bob Evans’ office, Uncle Bob. I had Angus come up there. We had him read for one of the pro (skater) rolls. That didn’t click either, so I asked if he could read for Walker. He took maybe 10 minutes by himself, and when he came back we started talking about it. He knew. Exactly.
Every park has a Walker—a skater-turned waistoid Buddah, just sitting there…
Yes. And Angus remembered that person from his local (park) growing up. He played that character and it was . . . immediate. Me and (NoHo producer) Malcolm Washington looked at each other and started laughing.
A scene in NoHo comes to mind: It’s maybe the one time Walker puts the bottle down and steps on the board, and we see that he actually can skate. Kinda like those scenes in Euphoria when this sluggish guy suddenly makes Lexi (Maude Apatow) crack up—
—he killed it in Euphoria. To me he’s the best thing in that whole show. Plucking a piece of truth out of the universe and replacing it within that art.
—or even in interviews when turns to the camera and we see his huge beautiful eyes. It goes back to the question: What did Angus bring to these roles?
That’s a great question, and it reiterates the way I’ve been painting him the whole time, talking to you. Angus was more quiet. He might be drinking, smoking, so that might lead you to jump to a bunch of other conclusions. But when you give the right energy to him, he’ll give it back to you. It’s that hustler mentality. Those street smarts. There’s definitely a lot of that in his Walker character, but that’s because he’s been around his whole life.
How was he to direct?
It wasn’t hard to draw anything out of him, because he always would ask why. Why is this gonna happen? Why are we saying this? That showed me he’s conscious. He’s asking the right question. Lots of people ask what, some people ask how, barely anybody asks why.
Some actors like to know their role and not step outside. He reportedly didn’t.
He was more than just an actor. Energy-wise, he was really attuned. In North Hollywood, there were a few scenes where he said, “I think this should unfold like this.” And in Euphoria, I know he changed way more stuff.
