Interview with Hunter Schafer, star of Euphoria and face of Angel Elixir by Mugler

Interview by Olivier Joyard, 

portraits by Harley Weir.

Published on 13 March 2023. Updated on 14 April 2026.

All those who watched the first season of Euphoria, HBO’s hit series about troubled American high-school kids, will remember Hunter Schafer’s performance. The American actress was making her small-screen debut as Jules, a teenager going through a sexual and identity crisis. And what a start! In addition to her seemingly fragile persona, she 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. Today, as season 3 of Sam Levinson’s flagship show just came out on HBO, Hunter Schafer’s career is hitting heights.

2023 saw her big screen debut 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 exactly where I want to be,” she declares. “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 Schafer‘s voice hides a certain shyness. She carefully chooses her words, with the emphasis and attention of those who know the power of language. Perhaps because her first artistic form of expression had to do with words. Indeed, the Trenton, New Jersey native, has long dreamed of writing comics. “When I was a 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. I’ve never stopped since then,” she explains. Her father, a big fan of comic books, introduced her to the genre. “There were always plenty at home, and they deeply inspired me. For a long time I wanted to become an illustrator.” 

Encouraged by her high-school classmates and teachers, Hunter Schafer understood that her destiny lies in the artistic sphere. She began contributing to one of the most interesting online publications at the time, Rookie Mag. The magazine was at the crossroads between 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 end up changing direction and working in a completely different artistic field, I still have that impression,” she shares. Although her drawings are still public – features in some episodes of Euphoria and on social media – it was in fashion that the young creative first started out.

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 entered to understand how it worked.” — Hunter Schafer

A committed actress and activist

In addition to her acting career, Hunter 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 bathrooms corresponding to their psychological gender identity. In August 2020, she posted a selfie on Instagram wearing a T-shirt marked “Support Trans Futures.” She was also vocal about the mental-health issues affecting many people during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Today, she expresses her sensibility through her acting career. While still admiring other artists, she herself has become a role model. If the character of Jules in Euphoria moves us so much, it is no doubt because she was created out of lived experience and sincerity. “When I got the part, I was ready to put my modeling career on hold and go back to school,” she remembers. “That audition, the first one 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 pretty shaken up.” 

Hunter Schafer was only 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.”

The American actress particularly remembers a scene from the seventh episode of the first season, when Jules comes out of a nightclub 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.” 

New face of Mugler’s fragrance Angel Elixir

The one who didn’t see herself as an actress, has nonetheless become one of the rising stars of her generation. “I try to be good enough,” the new face of Mugler‘s new fragrance Angel Elixir says. She 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. There are stronger, woody notes too. All of that collides and mixes to create a fusion that makes me feel soft and sexy. As if I was on a higher plane. That’s what I’m constantly looking for in life.” 

The first episode of Euphoria, season 3, created by Sam Levinson, is available now on HBO Max.