“It’s been a strange few weeks,” Hunter Schafer tells me on a Zoom call from Los Angeles. “Because I think I wasn’t sure if Euphoria was going to be really over or not.” When the actor and model saw that the last episode was officially called the “series finale,” she realized that the HBO show—in which she made her acting debut in 2019, playing Jules opposite Zendaya’s Rue—had truly come to an end.

“I was like ‘Okay, it’s over now.’ So I’ve sort of been processing that,” Schafer says. “And thinking a lot about what’s next.”

When we speak, it’s a calm-before-the-storm moment for Schafer, ahead of a busy year. She is the face of Mugler’s Angel Blush Eau de Parfum, a new take on a beloved fragrance that will roll out nationwide this fall. Her IMDB is stacked: Upcoming, there’s the miniseries Blade Runner 2099, Tom Ford’s Cry to Heaven, Japanese horror video game OD (which Hideo Kojima co-wrote with Jordan Peele), the surreal film Fish (in which she stars alongside Tim Roth), psychological horror film Palette, and more.

It’s an impressive roster for any actor, and especially for someone who never planned on acting in the first place. I tell Schafer I first encountered her work about a decade ago, when Tavi Gevinson’s beloved teen magazine Rookie published her illustrations. Back then, as a teenager, Schafer became known as a model and trans rights activist. After high school, she planned on studying fashion at Central Saint Martins. Then, Euphoria happened.

Now, the self-identified “fashion nerd” since middle school says that working with Mugler is a dream. “I was watching those hourlong runway shows that you can find on YouTube when I was in high school,” she says, adding that Mugler was always an “enormous sort of vault of inspiration” for her.

When we talk, she’s about to go to Italy for her next film. But lately, Schafer has been enjoying the summer, watching Love Island USA (“I’ve really gotten into Bravo this year,” she says), and taking a lighter, more natural approach to her beauty. She spent the last few summers in Europe and is inspired by the French “less is more” philosophy.

“I like to keep it sort of lighter and more natural cause it’s warm,” she says. “Elevating myself with lighter makeup or a lighter, sweeter fragrance.” Wearing perfume is like “stepping into a heightened or elevated version of yourself,” she says. “It’s the same thing that putting on a pair of heels does for me, or putting on a costume at work.”

Schafer has had to step into many different versions of herself as an actor, taking on new challenges, including doing an accent for the first time for her first period piece.

“It’s still sort of mind-blowing to me because this wasn’t a career I was planning on,” she says of all her upcoming projects. But she’s not immune to self-doubt. “Every once in a while, I’m like, ‘Okay, is this it? Is the jig up? Or am I gonna keep going?’” she shares. But the phone keeps ringing. “I’ve been really lucky,” she says.

How does she prepare herself to take on each role? “For the job that was a period piece with an accent and everything, obviously that’s something that’s new and scary to a degree. But it’s how it’s felt ever since I started,” she says. “Like with Euphoria, where I had no idea what I was doing, and just sort of had to throw myself in.”

“It’s sort of a lot of faking it till I make it, trusting that I do have the sort of power and artistic reservoir to bring it to these opportunities,” she continues. “Even beforehand, with Rookie, which was my first time making work that was published, which was also terrifying—for a publication that I loved with my whole heart—it was terrifying in the same sense in that I had to step my game up and bring it.”

As Schafer prepares for her next steps, she says her goal is to be “gracious” with herself. “I found out it’s my Saturn Return,” she says. “It feels correct in that yeah, I’m continuing to sort of step into these new boxes and take on these new challenges, and to know that I can do it even when it’s not easy.”

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