Alexa Demie is not retiring from acting.

If you are wondering why this even needs to be said of a 35-year-old actress coming off the final season of TV’s buzziest show and the most high-profile gig of her career, then you have clearly not been paying attention to the more Euphoria-obsessed corners of the internet.

Since the start of this third season, a theory has circulated that Demie intends to stop acting entirely after the series wraps. The source, it turns out, was an unknown keyboard warrior who recirculated, without context, a 2020 episode of The A24 Podcast on which Demie complained to The Curse star Nathan Fielder about a period early in her career when it felt like all the good parts were going to white girls; she questioned whether there was space for Latina actresses in Hollywood, and whether she wanted to keep putting up with auditioning at all. Unbeknownst to Demie, who says she assiduously avoids her own headlines, rumors of her imminent industry exit started to gain traction. When I ask her about it, her first instinct is to mess with the fans who have expressed potential heartbreak. “Should we just ride with it?” she suggests with a grin.

She then elaborates a bit on that erstwhile discontent. During her early 20s, she says, years before she got the role on Euphoria, she was in a casting office just up the street from where we’re sitting now, at Max & Helen’s diner, in the Larchmont neighborhood of Los Angeles. She read the character description for a lead role that had a paragraph-length list of acceptable ethnicities — all Hispanic backgrounds were omitted. “I was reading it, and it really hit me — and I kept having that experience,” says Demie, who is half white but connects strongly with the Mexican side of her heritage. “I was sick of going into those rooms, and this was during that time when you’re young and every few months you’re just like, ‘I’m quitting, I’m quitting.’ But knowing me, I never would have quit. I’m more of the energy of like, ‘No, I’m going to show you I can do it.’”

The whispers of retirement are no doubt abetted by the unorthodox career moves that have made Demie Hollywood’s most elusive “It” girl. Though she has been a breakout star of Euphoria since its premiere in 2019 — thanks largely to the bad bitch energy she brings to the role of Maddy Perez — she’s done few interviews, and most were during season one, when she was contractually obligated. In fact, when she appeared on the red carpet of HBO’s long-awaited season three premiere, it was the first time most fans had seen her in years, largely due to a self-imposed exile.

Euphoria creator Sam Levinson says, “There’s an air of mystery to her, and you never feel like she’s playing a game with it. It’s just natural, and she also has a great sense of humor about it.” The pop star Rosalía, a close friend and season three co-star, says Demie has a unique kind of purity: “She has the cleanest, brightest aura in all of Hollywood.” (And to ensure it stays pristine, the actress brought her own energy healer to her THR cover shoot, who was on hand to cleanse the space before her video interview.)

Demie traces her insider’s outsider relationship with the industry to growing up just on its periphery. Raised in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, she thought of Hollywood itself as elusive. “I saw the sign right there,” she gestures north from our booth at the diner. “And I knew that was the place where shit went down, and it felt close, but nobody in my family had any idea about it.”

She was raised by her mother, a makeup artist for MAC Cosmetics stores who would occasionally use Demie as a subject for her master classes. She went to John Marshall High School in Los Feliz, where she was in drama and dance, but says nobody ever discussed the industry or what a real career in Hollywood might look like. She did, she says, always have a drive for money and the freedom it could offer, and was always hustling. She worked as a receptionist at her aunt’s dental practice when she was 12, wearing a headset (which she loved) and filing paperwork (which she hated). After high school, she spent two weeks in New York visiting colleges — “I had the best two weeks of my life, but I realized, ‘I’m going to party too much in New York, so I need to stay [in L.A.].’”

Around 2015, after a few years of working odd jobs — at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and American Apparel, a stint as a stylist’s assistant and a sunglasses designer — a friend asked her to be in his short film. After its release, he told her that people were asking about “the girl in the movie” and that she should really think about a career as an actress. “He was like, ‘There are people in the business who want to meet you,’” she remembers. “Something started spinning and I was like, ‘Maybe there’s something here.’” She started reading books about the craft and watching vintage YouTube videos of Marlon Brando with his acting coach. She can’t remember how she got her first manager — “She actually just messaged me a month ago, to say congrats on everything” — but does know that she paid for her to take a lesson with acting guru Lesly Kahn, who coached Demie for her first potential movie role. “It was a biopic about Griselda Blanco, and I was going to play a younger Griselda, but it wound up falling apart,” she says.

Next came the indie Brigsby Bear, a comedy from Saturday Night Live alum Dave McCary (now married to Emma Stone) and guest roles on a few TV shows (Ray Donovan, The OA). She got most noticed, in certain circles, thanks to a small part in Jonah Hill’s 2018 directorial debut, Mid 90s. “But I still felt like I hadn’t done it yet,” she says. “Have I done it now? I don’t know. But Euphoria came next and everything felt different.”

***

Euphoria was the first project that she really, desperately wanted.

Augustine Frizzell, who was directing the pilot, had remembered Demie from a previous audition for a film role that eventually went to someone else, and sent the actress the script. Demie, a music obsessive, recalls being extremely impressed by the needle drops that Levinson wrote in.

Demie actually read for the Rue part first, in front of Levinson and Frizzell, who were friendly but offered no feedback. She left dejected and met up with a friend she was making music with at the time. “I was being so dramatic, like, ‘This is the end of everything, my life’s over,’” she recalls with a laugh. “He was like, ‘Let’s let that out [on the track].’ We started recording, and halfway through I got a call saying, ‘They want you back for Maddy.’”

Levinson says he knew immediately that he wanted Demie to play Maddy, the resident queen bee of the fictional East Highland High, the longtime best friend to Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie and the on-again, off-again girlfriend of the star quarterback Nate (played by Jacob Elordi). “But HBO didn’t think she was right for the part, because they had imagined a blond cheerleader,” says Levinson. “I remember pulling her aside and giving her some tips. I think she was wearing something red, and I knew that the execs would immediately think, ‘Oh, she’s too Latin.’ So I told her, ‘Don’t wear anything red,’ to soften up what I knew would be their initial perception.”

The network brought Demie back in to read alongside the blond girl they were also considering for the part; Levinson says it was as much of a test for HBO as it was the other way around. “There have been a couple of moments in my career where I know an actor is right for something, and I think to myself, ‘If we can’t get on the same page about this, then we’re not making the same show and maybe I’m not interested in making whatever it is you’re making.’” The final callback was a showcase for HBO, with all of the eventual cast reading in front of producers and execs, but only Demie going up against one final contender.

“I was like Joan of Arc,” she says. “At that point it wasn’t about getting the show anymore, it was about going into that room and being seen.” The network had her read from a now-infamous scene in episode four, which takes place entirely at the local carnival. Nate’s family just won the chili cook-off, shortly after he chastises Maddy for wearing a revealing outfit when his (white) parents are already skeptical of her values; Maddy responds by calling her boyfriend’s mother a cunt and then tipping over the winning vat of chili. “They couldn’t have picked a better scene. I was in my fire. The last line is like, ‘I know none of you like me and I’m not supposed to be here.’ I looked every single person in their eyes. And then I was driving off the lot and I got the call that I got the part.”

Demie never spoke about the audition process with anyone at HBO. “But they called me in for a general the next day, to tell me how much they love me,” she says with a grin. She doesn’t blame any individual. “The system is telling you what it needs to be, and what things need to look like. It’s been operating this way for so long, and people are going off of what they were taught. I feel no resentment, and there was closure in them saying, ‘OK, girl, it’s you.’”

***

At the end of production of Euphoria’s second season, Demie was struggling. She’d spent nine months filming brutal material (a gun held to her head) at a grueling pace (it wasn’t unusual to shoot from 3 p.m. until 6 a.m.), and she hadn’t yet learned how to separate herself from Maddy. “I didn’t realize how method I was, and how seriously I was taking everything,” she says. Her personal life was starting to fray, too, but she declines to get into it. “Girl, a lot went down, and things were changing within and around me, and it was a lot of purging,” is all she’ll say.

So she rented a new place in the Hollywood Hills and went there every day to swim and journal and meditate — no movies, no television, no music (save for the occasional classical or frequency sounds). She tried EMDR therapy and falconry (“I found this incredible woman who genuinely cares about her birds, and she would also let me go on journeys with her to fly her hawks”). She says her friends called her “the nun in the hills.” “She always knows where to take you to lie in the grass,” says Rosalía (but also, she adds, “where to find the best omakase”).

Then HBO sent the first three scripts for the third and final season of Euphoria, and when she read about the plot’s heavily religious themes — Levinson uses biblical allegories to follow the now-grown former students of East Highland on their descents into drug trafficking and sex work — she saw her final way out of her funk. “When I read it, I sobbed, and I really felt like Teresa de Ávila,” she says, referencing the 16th century Spanish nun who was known for her mysticism and spiritual reform. “I was like, ‘Girl, God is in everything. God is in the darkness [of this season]. You can bring light to these shadow areas.’”

Most of Maddy’s storyline in season three has been in those shadow areas; she reunites with Cassie to help (some would say push) her deep into the world of OnlyFans, eventually taking on more clients and acting as what could best be described as a madam. It’s a big leap from the things that counted as troublemaking during the high school seasons, and discourse around the show this year has often centered around whether it’s too broad a shift. “I mean, Maddy’s never been a morally pure character. She’s done some bad things in the past and has always been driven by a really strong hustle,” says Levinson. Demie sees her storyline as one of naivete. “She doesn’t have the street smarts that she thinks she does, like I don’t think she even knows sex trafficking is a thing,” she says, referring to Alamo’s operation. Demie also explains that audiences often forget how young these characters are, citing Maddy’s credit card debt and luxury fashion as another example of naivete. “When has this show ever been realistic? Obviously there’s very real topics and real issues that Sam likes to touch on. But in terms of our hair and our makeup and our wardrobe, it’s always been fantastical.”

Since its inception, Euphoria has been embroiled in low-level scandal. Some of it was sought-after — Levinson is a provocateur, and his courting of controversy has earned the series nine Emmy wins and far more nominations. Plenty of gossip also leaked out from behind the scenes — rumors that the actors were overworked, and that Levinson’s constant and last-minute script changes cost time and money and drove some of them to the verge of quitting.

Demie does not deny that the work is emotionally and physically taxing, but her experience doesn’t match the headlines. She says the hours were long, but the time on set was enjoyable. The scripts did change constantly, but she always liked the final result, and if there were elements that she was uncomfortable with, Levinson listened.

During season one, Maddy’s part called for a lot of nudity and sex scenes. “I thought that if I said no to doing them, then I wouldn’t have the part,” says Demie. “Not because anyone ever said that to me, but because I was so young and I didn’t know.” At one point, she filmed a montage of Maddy’s cheating on Nate, and realized she was uncomfortable. “I’m not saying I don’t love sex, and I think it can be portrayed beautifully and I know the show is portraying the life of teenage girls. But once I did it, I realized, ‘OK, I don’t love how this feels.’ So I said something, and everyone was empathetic, and I never did that again.”

And even in her lowest points with the show, Demie says she personally never blamed Levinson or production. Looking back on season two, she says that she hadn’t learned how to separate herself from Maddy and that she should have asked for support. She can laugh about a lot of it, too, like when she thinks about the fact that she conducted the entirety of the second season press junket dressed in a hoodie pulled completely taut around her face, sunglasses on, while her co-stars showed up in full glam. “First of all, I was working with Balenciaga at the time, so [that outfit] was fulfilling my contract. But I was also really over it, and I think I was reflecting that.”

Production on the third season was delayed by several years, a period of time that allowed for all sorts of speculation: Did the cast hate each other? Did the cast hate the show? Did HBO hate the scripts? “It was important that everyone felt season 3 was moving the story forward in a meaningful and ambitious way,” says Francesca Orsi, executive vp HBO programming, head of HBO drama series and films. “When Sam began sharing how much more expansive the world of the show would feel this season, there was genuine excitement about returning.”

Barbie Ferreira, who played Kat and became a close friend of Demie’s, quit the series, later telling the Armchair Expert podcast that she felt she wasn’t getting good storylines. “I was bummed, but I really respected her decision, she has to take care of herself,” says Demie. “It’s a brave move.”

HBO kept Demie in the loop throughout all of the delays and dramas — Angus Cloud’s death, Levinson’s work on The Idol — so she never felt any true uncertainty. “I was doing my best to surrender,” she says. She doesn’t know what went down with everyone else’s contract negotiations, but she never truly considered that they wouldn’t all return. “We don’t speak about business,” she says of the cast. “Zendaya’s great, she’ll give me advice if I ask. But what works for one person is not going to work for me and vice versa. We all chose a very interesting path. But it doesn’t feel like an elephant in the room, it feels natural. Who wants to talk about business?”

Fans of Euphoria often wonder why Demie didn’t follow the career trajectory of her co-stars. Traditional Hollywood logic reasons that, since Maddy Perez has been the critical and cultural favorite, she should have popped like Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney, who have become movie stars — or, to a lesser degree, Hunter Schafer and Maude Apatow, who may not be A-listers but work regularly outside of the show. “I think there’s a misconception about Alexa, and I’ve always rejected the framework of, ‘Oh, Alexa should have what Sydney or someone else has,’ because that’s a very high school mentality to bring to the craft,” says Levinson. “I think Alexa is doing everything that she wants, and if she doesn’t have something, it’s because she doesn’t want it. I see her as completely fulfilled.”

Julio Torres, who managed to convince Demie to act in an episode of his HBO limited series Fantasmas, believes her restraint comes from a deep level of confidence. “Her hunger is for interesting and fun projects that she can contribute significantly to, not fame or fortune or a follower count or the approval of anyone else,” he says. “People are left wanting more. I have friends who’ve been her for Halloween, which I think is one of the highest compliments for any performer.”

Sometimes Demie’s friends will send her takes from the internet about her relative lack of fame. “It’s like, did you ever think that I don’t want it?” she says. “People really take the authority out of your hands. What happened to my ability to choose? I like my life like this, and I wouldn’t change it.”

When the credits roll on the series finale, Levinson says he wants fans of Maddy to “feel like she is finally free.” What the actress behind her will do with her own freedom remains a mystery. “There are goals, and things that I want, but I’m choosing to keep that private,” says Demie. When I tell her that Levinson told me he’s interested in writing more for her — “I could literally write 10 seasons’ worth of her character in this show, I could imagine her in 10 different other iterations of ideas that I have and I’d be hard-pressed to think of any project I would work on where Alexa’s name wouldn’t pop in my head” — she just smiles. (Orsi reiterated Levinson’s sentiment, saying “We’ll always want to continue collaborating with her in the future.”) She says that Euphoria felt like a master class not only in acting, but in putting herself out there, against her strongest and most hermit-like inclinations. “If I didn’t have that experience, I’d be hiding up there like Enya,” she says, pointing again in the direction of the hills. “But that life is always there for me, and what I’m learning is that I can have both.”