All those who saw Euphoria, HBO’s hit series about wild American high-school kids, will remember Hunter Schafer’s first appearance. Making her small-screen début, she played Jules, an adolescent going through a sexual and identity crisis. And what a début! In addition to a certain fragility, Schafer displayed a more complex mystery, a sort of self-affirmation buried behind the doubts of her age. The emotion we felt for her heralded a star in the making – four years after the pilot of Sam Levinson’s series was first aired, Schafer’s career is hitting the heights. As well as the new season of Euphoria (which should be out in the autumn), 2023 will see her big-screen début in the blockbuster The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, alongside Viola Davis and Peter Dinklage, but also in the indie horror movie Cuckoo, directed by Tilman Singer. “I’m in exactly the place I want to be,” she says. “I like the very special feeling of being able to share work I’m proud of. This opportunity has been long in the making, and required a lot of time and effort. I’m very lucky...”
Hunter's voice betrays a certain shyness as she chooses her words delicately, non emphatically and with all the wariness of those who know the power of language. And also, perhaps, because her first form of artistic expression had to do with words, for the Trenton, New Jersey native long dreamed of authoring comics. “When I was a small child, my parents sat me at the table with paper and pencils to keep me busy rather than sticking me in front of the TV. That’s when I first began to draw, and I’ve never stopped.” Her father, a big fan of comics, introduced her to the medium. “There were always plenty at home, and they hugely inspired me. For a long time I wanted to become an illustrator.”
In high school, encouraged by her classmates and teachers, Schafer understood that hers was an artistic destiny, and began contributing to one of the most interesting publications of the times, the website Rookie Mag, which operated at the intersection of fashion and feminism. “I started drawing for the site and, even if I didn’t earn much, the simple fact of being paid to publish things I’d been doing all my life for personal pleasure amazed me. I told myself that I was capable of doing it, that I could make it, and everything became clear to me: I’d made the right choice. Even if I ended up changing direction and working in a completely different artistic field, I still have that impression.” Though her drawings are still publicly visible – in certain Euphoria episodes and on social media – it was in fashion that Schafer began her first career.
After graduating from art school, she decided not to continue her studies at London’s Central Saint Martins because she was beginning to make a name for herself as a model. Runway shows and photo shoots became her workplaces, and today she still recalls her particular admiration for the iconoclastic designer Shayne Oliver (Hood By Air), who she met when he was doing a Helmut Lang residency. “I’d read quite a lot about him over the years, and all of a sudden I found myself in the same room as him, completely overexcited and trying on all the clothes and touching everything. Something clicked in me. He was my god, but he was also a person. Fashion was the first industry whose workings I understood, and I think it taught me a big lesson about the complexity of work. Beauty is not born easily.”
“Fashion was the first industry I infiltrated to understand how it works.” Hunter Schafer
Hunter Schafer, heroine of Euphoria and activist actress
In parallel, Schafer became an active campaigner for transgender rights, something she doesn’t talk about much today but which started in high school when she fought North Carolina’s plans to ban transgender people from using the bathrooms corresponding to their psychological gender identity. In August 2020, she posted a selfie on Instagram (her account has almost seven million followers) wearing a T-shirt marked “Support Trans Futures,” and also spoke about the mental-health issues that affected many people during the coronavirus lockdowns. But today it’s through her acting work that she expresses her sensibilities, and, while continuing to admire other artists, she herself has become an admired artist and role model. If the character of Jules in Euphoria touches us so much, it’s no doubt because she was born of lived experience and sincerity. “When I got the part, I was ready to put my modelling career on hold to go back to school,” she remembers. “The audition, the first in my life, was followed by six others. My relationship with Jules began during the casting process. A few weeks later, we filmed the pilot – I was deeply affected.”
Today 24, Schafer was just 19 when she started working with Euphoria’s creator, Sam Levinson. Since the series makes a point of seeking authenticity, there was no question of imposing a script or an approach to the character – a transgender teenager – on the actress who would play that role without first consulting her. “At the time I was just two years older than the character of Jules. I was still a teenager and could bring that to the role. Sam Levinson and I brainstormed and tried to get Jules on the rails. We met over several days in a café and talked. Ideas sparked. Sam works collaboratively – it’s totally made to measure. The stories and lives of everyone in the cast influenced their characters.” Schafer particularly remembers a scene from the seventh episode of the first season, when Jules comes out of a night club and discusses their relationship to femininity with their friends. “Jules’s comments came directly from my experience and conversation with Sam. At the end of the day, the scene is an infusion of ideas and memories. I love this dreamlike and, to a certain extent, philosophical moment about their humanity and gender.”
Hunter Schafer, face of the perfume Angel Elixir by Mugler
Schafer, who didn’t see herself as an actress, has nonetheless become one of the fastest rising stars of her generation. “I try to be good enough,” says the new face of the Mugler fragrance Angel Elixir, who recounts her experience with enthusiasm, like an apprenticeship akin to her other activities. “For the first time in my life I took time to understand the beauty, the sensations, and everything else a perfume can make you feel. My first interaction was magnetic.” When asked what the scent evokes for her, she speaks of her own experience and, in a certain way, her personal quest. “Everything I love in my life has a form of duality. That’s very important to me. In the fragrance, there’s a soft side, but that’s not all there is to it, because there are also stronger, woody notes. All of that collides and mixes to create a fusion that makes me feel soft, but also sexy and as though I’m on a higher plane. That’s what I’m constantly looking for in life.”
