Even though she is offered trans roles, the 25-year-old actress of Eufória no longer wants to accept them, because she believes that she can go further in her career if her own transgenderism is not the focus of her work – this is what Hunter Schafer talked about, among other things for GQ magazine in a given interview.
Schafer landed her first television role at the age of 19 on HBO’s hit series Euphoria, playing transgender teenager Jules Vaughn. Two seasons of the series have been completed so far, the filming of the third has been postponed since 2022, and Schafer, who was originally going to be an artist and then a model, has since bagged two film roles: he played in the film Cuckoo (our review here) and appeared in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes also, in the role of Tigris.
She told GQ that she knew the young trans character Jules, “written with depth, complexity and care,” made a difference, especially at a time when trans youth across the United States were being disenfranchised.
Last August, Schafer’s home state of North Carolina became the 22nd state to pass a law restricting or banning trans minors from accessing gender-affirming medical care, as more young people across the country come out as trans. The actress came out as trans as a teenager and underwent gender confirmation surgery during high school with the support of her family.
Schafer is an active advocate for LGBTQ rights himself, but he says he is looking forward to the moment when his identity is no longer the first thing people mention about him. That’s why she no longer likes to talk about her own transgenderism, especially in interviews – because in this case, she thinks it’s inevitable that she won’t be referred to as “the transgender actress” in the title.
“It took me a while to learn that I don’t want to be reduced to that, and I find it ultimately demeaning to myself and what I want to do. Especially after high school, I got tired of talking about it. I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am now, I’ve gotten through the really tough parts of transition and now I just want to be a girl and finally move on.”
“I’m being offered a lot of trans roles, but I just don’t want to take them. I do not want to talk about it.”
“I know I’m one of the most famous transgender people in the media right now, and I feel some responsibility and maybe a little guilt for not being a more vocal voice. But at the end of the day, I really think that if I don’t focus on that, I can get further. And I think that moving forward and doing awesome things for the sake of the ‘movement’ will be much more useful than talking about it all the time.”
In the interview, the actress also talked about how she learned to accept and shake off negative criticism of herself, and now also accepts that there will always be people who hate her just because she’s trans and call her a straight man. “I’m not interested in trying to convince them anymore”.
Schafer – although he probably doesn’t know it – also had a memorable adventure with Origo a year ago. The actress confused the editors of the well-known anti-trans, right-wing newspaper’s big section with her set at last year’s Oscars, who first took down pictures of her referring to her as a “beautiful actress”, then quickly slammed the door on them and called her a “LGBTQ activist actress”, and then another. step back and rechristen him as a “man who has undergone surgery to become a woman”. The endlessly fun run amok has been summarized in this article.
Hollywood has long debated whether non-trans actors can play trans roles. Many in the transgender community argue that trans characters should be played by actors who are transgender in real life. Others argue that acting is all about “becoming someone else” and that it would be too restrictive for actors to only take on roles that match their own personal characteristics.
Despite this, several actors have previously apologized for taking on trans roles. In 2021, Eddie Redmayne said of the 2015 film The Danish Girl, in which he played transgender painter Lili Elbe: “I made that movie with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake.” In 2018, Scarlett Johansson also walked out of a film in which she would have played Dante “Tex” Gill, a trans man, after being criticized by many for the casting. The actress later apologized because her first reaction to the criticism was to “ask Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto and Felicity Huffman what they think about it” (all three are cisgender actors who have played transgender characters in films).
