The Euphoria star says her memoir explores capitalism, tradition, and her ongoing refusal to be boxed in

Chloe Cherry doesn’t do regret. In fact, the Euphoria actress and OnlyFans darling rejects the idea of spending any time thinking about alternate ways things could’ve played out. 

“It’s a genuinely pointless emotion for a human to feel,” she tells Rolling Stone.

It’s a self-assured statement, to be sure. But it’s this same confident energy that helped Cherry explode into Hollywood in 2022, following her career-making portrayal of spacey, down-on-her-luck drug addict Faye eyed in Sam Levinson’s gritty teen drama Euphoria. People know Cherry’s character. But she’s sure they don’t know her. Now for the first time, the former adult-film star, actress, and model is letting people into the behind-the-scenes history of her actual life — with a memoir. 

“Going about my life that first year in [Los Angeles], I just kept thinking, ‘This has been such a crazy experience,’” Cherry says. “I need so badly to live to tell this tale.” 

Out Feb. 23, 2027 from Simon & Schuster, Cherry’s memoir Somewhere Dark and Hot doesn’t just break down Cherry’s record ascent in Hollywood. Instead, Cherry says the book will chart her journey from an 18-year-old runway to a newbie in the adult film industry to a fan-favorite Euphoria cast member. The book includes memories from her time living in model homes, the porn sets where she worked, and her struggles with mental health, eating disorders, and drug abuse. “Where I grew up in Pennsylvania, it’s a very small town. People are very religious and have very traditional ways of living and they see a place like L.A. as evil,” she says. “My whole childhood, I spent my time wishing I was somewhere warmer and with more excitement, more action.” 

The actress tells Rolling Stone she’s been inspired throughout the years by authors like David Sedaris, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Hunter S. Thompson, but was most excited about the memoir because it gave her a chance to revisit difficult aspects of her life from a new — and hopeful healing — place. “It’s been extremely therapeutic for me to use my own experiences, even if they were negative, to entertain people. I get to take these bad experiences and turn them into something that I can gain,” she says. “What I’ve always wanted to be able to do is show my own personal life perspective, instead of just having the world project things on to me based [on] what I do for a living.” 

Even in a cultural era where sex work has become more legitimized, and platforms like OnlyFans are worth billions of dollars, Cherry says she remains frustrated that sex workers are often boxed into hurtful, reductive, or plainly misogynistic stereotypes. Hollywood thrives on the rebrand — so why are sex workers often left out of that arrangement? 

“I don’t understand why, whenever any character or real-life human is a sex worker that suddenly becomes just all they are to people,” Cherry says. “Nobody can see anything past that.”

The book takes its title from the assumptions Cherry had about L.A. growing up — “Somewhere that’s hot and dark” spiritually as well as physically — but the new author says she’s most excited to give people “an honest look” into the inner workings of her mind and a chance to have people draw conclusions from real facts and stories, not just what they think when they see a face as they scroll on their phone. 

“The book is [asking] how far are you willing to go to get what you want,” she says. “How far are you willing to go to start over?”