15 Facts About Hunter Schafer, Star Of The New “Hunger Games” Prequel
1.Hunter Schaferstudied visual art at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and has contributed comics and drawings to Rookie Mag. Her work often uses ink and watercolors, and she occasionally shares it on her Instagram.
2.Hunter started her transition as a freshman, with the support of her family — including her father, who is a pastor. “After kind of coming to a consensus that this was a real thing, I was put on hormone blockers which pressed the pause button on puberty and gave me time to think about my identity,” she said in one interview when she was 17.
3.In fact, the reason why she was interviewed so often as a teenager was because she and her family protested North Carolina’s now-repealed House Bill 2, which effectively banned trans people from using school and state bathrooms. They joined the lawsuit filed against the bill with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union.
4.She subsequently wrote in a powerful essay for Teen Vogue in 2016, “Every time I use a public bathroom, I have to make a choice: Do I break the law, or do I disregard my comfort and face the risk of harassment and violence? […] I’ve finally begun to accept myself as more than what is stated on my birth certificate. But a new law in my home state of North Carolina rejects all of this.”
6.Hunter has worked extensively as a model. Before her time on Euphoria, she walked the runway for designers like Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu, and Rick Owens. She also explored her activism through her own fashion designs, such as a 2018 pair of underwear with peel-away embroidered hands that read, “Peel away every perception.”
7.Hunter had no acting experience before Euphoria. In fact, Hunter was planning on attending fashion school in London after modeling in New York for a year. She credits the acting coach she was set up with during the Euphoria audition process with helping her fall “in love” with acting.
8.In fact, it was Hunter’s advocacy work that allowedEuphoria‘s talent scout Jennifer Venditti to find her through Instagram. Fellow casting director Mary Vernieu said of her audition, “Hunter came in and won it in the room in a beautiful way. It was important that the character be very natural. Hunter had the experience — a lot of these kids are transitioning and going through this. She had never acted before. She could intuit what to do. Her performance is seamless.”
9.Hunter herself influenced the character of Jules. She also co-wrote and co-produced the episode “Fuck Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob,” saying that the episode came “out of the worst depression I’ve ever had, and needing somewhere to put all of that energy. When I say that episode really became a lifeline, I mean it.”
11.The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is Hunter’s live-action feature debut, but she did voice a character in the English dub of the movie Belle.
12.Hunter plays Tigris in The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. “So many people came in and read [for the role], [but] they were thinking more of Liz Banks’s Effie Trinket than they were of Tigris. They’re putting on this Capitol effect, and it’s just so phony,” director Francis Lawrence told Entertainment Weekly. “Hunter came in and did the scene, and she was so endearing and warm.”
13.The Hunger Games was Hunter’s favorite book series in middle school. She even created a Capitol costume for Halloween and drew Hunger Games-inspired graphic novels.
14.As a live-action movie of The Legend of Zelda was announced to be in development, many fans pitched Hunter for the role of Zelda. “I love the game, personally. I played it as a kid, and I still play it now,” she told Vanity Fair in response. “Who knows! That would be pretty cool.”
15.Finally, future films for Hunter include the horror movie Cuckoo and an A24 drama called Mother Mary, alongside Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel.
