Hunter Schafer started preparing for her first leading role back in high school — she just didn’t know it at the time. Schafer will make her lead debut in Cuckoo, a stylish and chaotic thriller set in the German Alps by writer and director Tilman Singer, on August 9.
“I was one of those [teenagers],” the 25-year-old actress says on a Zoom call with Teen Vogue. “I don't know if you ever did this… whenever I got a nosebleed, I would want to take a picture with it.” I asked her what she meant. Like, an aesthetic nosebleed photo? “Exactly. Very Tumblr.”
Schafer was “totally” a horror movie buff in high school, watching nothing but horror movies for a period of time. “I was just angsty and depressed, and it really fed me at that point,” she says. “Now I find them more fun and I can also kind of appreciate all that goes into them a little more now, having made one.”
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It’s the perfect set up for what will be a large step in her blossoming acting career. After season one of Euphoria, in which Schafer stars as fan-favorite character Jules, Schafer says she was on the hunt for “a new project that wasn’t Euphoria,” and was specifically in search of a movie role. After reading what seemed like countless scripts, Cuckoo flew into her lap. Schafer was already a fan of Singer’s first film Luz, and fell in love reading the “dense and strange” world he built for Cuckoo.
“I was like, I don't care what I do with him, I just want to work with him,” she remembers. “[I] did quite a few self tapes and really fought for this role, and thankfully got it.”
In Cuckoo, Schafer plays Gretchen, a 17-year-old American who moves with her father, stepmother, and sister to a stunning and faraway resort. Soon after the family arrives, a series of mysterious happenings — women randomly vomiting, creepy noises, rapidly repeating timelines, a terrifying screaming woman in a field — lead to the discovery of a twisted family secret.
Gretchen acquires several injuries throughout the movie, and with each one she has more blood and bandages. For Schafer, the bandages did as much for character development as a retro costume would in a period piece.
“As I've done more movies and taken on characters that are more of a departure from who I am as a person, the physical side of it all has really helped me find ways into the characters,” she says. “I feel like they also created a nice sort of link between her emotional landscape as well as they keep building up.”
Gretchen initially appears angsty: she’s harsh toward her 8-year-old sister and bristly toward her family and her new boss. But we come to find that these emotions are the product of loss, as she’s dealing with the death of her mother.
“I think it really boils down to grief for Gretchen and trying to outrun it and maybe finding a way out, which I think is sisterhood and Alma at the end of the day,” Schafer explains. Alma, Gretchen’s little sister, is played by child actor Mila Lieu. Lieu’s character Alma is non-verbal; Schafer had to brush up on her ASL before filming began. “It's something that has been a part of my life since middle school," Schafer explains. “I had quite a few deaf friends in middle school and took ASL lessons and picked that up.”
Schafer and Lieu (who she calls the “sweetest, sweetest”) performed full scenes in ASL. “It was also really impressive watching her pick up sign language and then getting to do entire scenes in sign language together. It was an adventure for both of us," Schafer says. "She is just so great and heartbreaking, and I'm really thankful for Alma and Gretchen's relationship in the movie. I feel like it really provides a heart or a soul, something for Gretchen to fight for.”
Having an affable scene partner like Lieu may have been a relief, because as Schafer admits, she was pretty nervous about the role — Cuckoo was her first movie, after all. The horror film wrapped production just days before filming began for her next project, 2023’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.
“I had never been on another set than Euphoria before,” Schafer explains. “I was like, ‘Okay, this is where I learned how to act. Am I still going to be able to do that in a completely different circumstance with new people?’”
Cuckoo may be Schafer’s first time leading a feature film, but her career has been building up to this for a few years. While the actress is currently filming the Blade Runner 2099 series in Prague, she appeared in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness and starred in major ad campaigns for Prada earlier this year; she is also set to star in the upcoming epic melodrama Mother Mary, and will begin filming Euphoria season 3 in January 2025. She’s even taken on roles behind the camera, co-writing two episodes of the HBO YA drama in 2021, highlighting her knack for storytelling through multiple mediums.
“This is not where I thought I would be in life, and this is not what I thought I would be doing six, seven years ago,” Schafer says. “I've really fallen in love with the whole filmmaking world.” Hunter Schafer is flying the nest — watch her soar.
Cuckoo is in theaters everywhere on August 9, 2024.
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