Euphoria: Hunter Schafer & Barbie Ferreira About Making HBO Series

From creator and writer Sam Levinson (who also directed five episodes), the eight-episode HBO drama series Euphoria follows the 17-year-old street (Zendaya, an obsessing and heartbreaking performance), an addict who has just come out of rehabilitation and is trying to find the next step. By the time she understands how much her addiction affects her mother (Nika King) and sister (Storm Reid), it forms a deep link with Jules (Hunter Schafer), a young trans girl who has just moved to the city, and who are looking for belonging to the minefield of high school life.

During the press day in Los Angeles for the series that has a shocking, beautiful and uncomfortably honest look at teenage life, Collider has had the opportunity to sit down with the co-stars Hunter Schafer and Barbie Ferreira (who plays Kat Hernandez, a body conscious teenager who takes power in her sexuality) to talk about what made them want to be part of Euphoria, what interested them most in their roles, their new way of acting and what they had learned on the set, in a very safe environment and conducive to collaboration, the opportunity to make their voices heard, the dynamics of the relationship between Jules and Rue, the most difficult most fun days on the set, and where they would like to take their careers next.

Collider: great work in this area! You are all fabulous.

BARBIE FERREIRA: Thank you!

When reading documents like this, do you want to be part of it immediately?

FERREIRA: Yeah. It was fun to read a script like this. I had not read a lot of scripts before, but it just took you for a walk, with every sentence. There were like a hundred scenes in each episode. It was incredible.

HUNTER SCHAFER: It was fascinating because it was the first real script that I read. In this sense, I am spoiled because it was deeply relatable and adorable, and such a joy.

The actors explain how they want to find roles and projects that challenge and scare them, and there seems to have been so much frightening scary when it comes to this content. Are there things that worry you the most?

FERREIRA: Generally, as for personal reasons, putting myself outside, in a way that I was not used to, felt very vulnerable, but that suited me perfectly. I knew it was going to be great, but I had to create a vulnerability that I'm not used to. It was scary to feel and have there, to be consumed by other people, but I got it back. After enjoying seeing it, I thought, "Okay, it makes sense!"

SCHAFER: Especially not having any acting training, the idea of ​​externalizing the emotion was really scary, but I also wanted to try, just to see what was coming. It turns out it's exciting and I'm obsessed. But some of these scenes were really intimidating.

Did Sam Levinson create an environment on the set that seemed very safe?

FERREIRA: Yes, we are spoiled for that too. Everyone is the best friend of the casting and the team. It was just a comfortable environment to do all those things. When we did it, it did not even seem to be particularly explicit, because it seemed so necessary and so real to the story. There is a reason for all this. It seemed right to me.

SCHAFER: It was also a massive bonding experience in that sense, because we had to be true to each other and see everything we had inside of ourselves. We all have a lot of respect for each other and love.

FERREIRA: And support.

Do you think you have a voice to determine who your characters are?

SCHAFER: Yes, definitely. Sam was really good about it. He is an extraordinary listener, and he was very willing to sit down with us to talk about what we thought about what he had written, and then he was talking about what he thought we were going to share with him. .

FERREIRA: When they auditioned, the descriptions were so vague that we created our own characters from ourselves, with eyes on the hair, on everything. I would call Sam and talk for hours about my life experiences, then I would have integrated it into the script. It was the most collaborative work. A person can not understand everyone, but Sam understands so deeply that he listens and exploits his talents and that he brings us genuine authenticity because we lived them. It's really dope.

And it shows well on the screen because it gives the impression of being even more real.

FERREIRA: It's really fun to dive into these deep, dark places. I never really had the opportunity to do it and I felt really good after, but it was a little later. I thought, "Yes, I did that!" It came out of me and it was really fun to do it.

SCHAFER: It's as if it's affecting my real life. At one point in my life, I had not cried for three months. Now, I'm worried if I have not cried like in the last three days. I do not hold back. It's normal to feel things because we have to feel everything so often in this show. It's beautiful.

Hunter, what was he to explore the relationship between Jules and Rue?

SCHAFER: It's a really special arc and trip. They both have rather unique circumstances that affect them individually and that they are mutually exclusive. They are comforted by these situations and this is part of the beauty of their relationship. They just have something special and palpable. And I could not have been more grateful to have a stage partner as awesome as Zendaya for that.

Sam Levinson directed five of the eight episodes, but three women – Pippa Bianco, Augustine Frizzell and Jennifer Morrison – came to direct the other episodes. How was it to have their voices and their views on your characters?

FERREIRA: It was really fun. It was also fun because we are new actors. So it was very interesting to see how different directors work. With the heaviest scenes, when there is a female director, they bring their own ideas and it is very collaborative. It was great.

SCHAFER: It was nice to like to see the different styles of direction and how that can change the whole experience. Everyone was really talented and had their own frequency. It has been fun to explore this and to have different perspectives on the series.

The tone changes slightly, depending on the characters highlighted in each episode. It seems that these different perspectives can really help and have an impact on a series like this one.

FERREIRA: I feel like every episode is so different, in its own way, and it's all visually beautiful and compelling. This really brings this energy to each of our characters in each episode, which is very fun to see, especially when we see little. It was so much fun. We loved that.

What did you learn to appreciate from your characters, the more you learned about it?

SCHAFER: As you learn their story, they become relatable because you can see each character. Although you may find one character more interesting than another, there is a level of empathy and feeling towards that person who appears when you see the reasons they act as they do and what who brought them where they are now. It's really special because it blurs the boundaries between good and bad, and it's in conflict.

FERREIRA: For me, when Kat started making her changes, I learned a lot about the physical change represented on the inside and how she copes with it. From the outside, you may see it becoming more confident or less secure, but it is complex, it is a shield and not a solution to the problem. Her insecurity is still there and she feels sadness and pain at being caught without her permission. So I had to learn to balance that, where she becomes more confident, but it also affects her identity.