Hunter Schafer explains why she doesn’t want transgender roles
Euphoria star Hunter Schafer has explained her position on playing transgender roles, sharing thoughts on why she would prefer to have conversations and take opportunities which don’t centre around gender as the sole signifier of personal identity.
Expressing her views in a new cover story interview, she said that she had recently tried to shift her career and public perception away from her transgender identity, adding that she had tried to avoid using the word “trans” in certain interviews to place the focus elsewhere.
Speaking with GQ, Schafer said that if she “let it happen,” she would have to face misleading and often offensive headlines. “It would still be giving ‘Transsexual Actress’ before every article ever,” Schafer said.
The star said that mentioning the word or her transgender identity in interviews is like a “blastoff” moment, which made her realise “I don’t want to be [reduced to] that, and I find it ultimately demeaning to me and what I want to do.”
She shared details of her experience during school, which made her feel “sick of talking about it,” claiming that “I just want to be a girl and finally move on.” She also described the “privilege” of shifting the focus to other aspects and not just her transgender identity, saying that “it’s been very intentional. I’ve gotten offered tons of trans roles, and I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Despite her attempt to escape a restrictive identity, Schafer is wholly aware of her status as a role model and as someone who is still strongly associated with the term. “I know for a fact that I’m one of the most famous trans people in media right now, and I do feel a sense of responsibility, and maybe a little bit of guilt, for not being more of a spokesperson,” she said, adding that while this may be the case, she still believes in “not making it the centrepiece to what I’m doing.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean ignoring or dismissing the movement, she explains, adding that “getting further and doing awesome shit, in the interest of ‘the movement’, will be way more helpful than talking about it all the time.”
Schafer gained global popularity after portraying Jules in Euphoria, making her movie debut in 2023 with a supporting role in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Her next move comes in the form of a lead role for Tilman Singer’s forthcoming horror thriller Cuckoo, slated for release in the summer of this year.
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