‘It’s an honour’: Hunger Games star Hunter Schafer on trans activism and love of fashion

Trans actor Hunter Schafer explains why she’s proud that Euphoria and the new Hunger Games prequel have combined her love of fashion and activism for LGBTQ rights.

Trans model and actor Hunter Schafer wishes she’d seen more people like herself on screen when she was growing up.

The 24-year-old American, who made her acting debut in hit HBO show Euphoria in 2019, started transitioning while she was in high school after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria. And while she has said she found comfort, support and information about her decision on the internet, screen role models were few and far between.

As a passionate activist for LGBTQ rights, Schafer says she’s now proud to be part of the conversations around trans issues that have become more prominent in recent years and hopes she can set an example to those on a similar journey.

“It’s an honour,” she says on Zoom call from Los Angeles, while promoting her new movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. “I know for a fact that little me would have loved to see what I do now in the media.

“I had figures that I looked up to who definitely changed my life and I hope that I can do some of the same of that for people who are younger and looking to the media to find some sort of sense of solace or some sort of reflection of themselves.”

Hunter Schafer, Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler and Josh Andres Rivera at The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes" Los Angeles Premiere last week. Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images/AFP

After two seasons playing trans high-schooler Jules Vaughn on the Emmy-nominated Euphoria – with a third season confirmed for 2025 – and now her role in Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Schafer has the chance to do just that.

The new film, released this week, is a prequel to the four Hunger Games films, starring Jennifer Lawrence as plucky survivor Katniss Everdeen, released between 2012-15, and like those movies, is based on the a novel by Suzanne Collins.

Schafer says she became a huge fan of the books while she was still in US middle school and the films, particularly their spectacular sets and costumes, blew her away and appealed to her burgeoning interest in the fashion world.

“The movies – particularly the costume design – deeply affected me,” she says. “So it’s pretty wild to be fully inside of that world for this movie.”

Fashion was an integral part of Schafer’s identity growing up and she was modelling and designing well before her acting career began. After graduating from her North Carolina High School in 2017, she moved to New York and signed with Elite Model Management. She was soon in demand on the catwalk and modelled for some of the biggest fashion houses including Prada, Marc Jacobs, Gucci, Dior and Helmut Lang among others.

Schafer’s character in The Ballad of Song and Snakes enabled Schafer to indulge in her love of fashion alongside costume designer Trish Summerville, who came up with the stunning clothes of the original films, such as Everdeen’s famous flaming dress and the exotic, over-the-top outfits of the super-wealthy elite in the post-apocalyptic dictatorship, Panem.

Hunter Schafer as Tigris Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Photo Credit: Murray Close

Schafer plays the younger version of the cat-faced stylist Tigris Snow (originated by Eugenie Bourant in Mockingjay Part II), cousin to the future dictator of Panem, Coriolanus Snow, and eventual rebel who will help Katniss overthrow him. The prequel, set 64 years before the events of the Lawrence’s first film, explores the early years of the brutal Hunger Games, and adopted a retro 1940s look to distinguish the two eras, much to the delight of Schafer.

“I had a lot of fun with this because in my real life I typically go in the more modern, artsy direction,” Schafer says. “But also, what I just loved aesthetically in general with the film is that it’s riding this funny line between it’s still the future, but it’s also the ’40s. It yields such an interesting wardrobe style as well as architecture. Me and Trish had a lot of fun … we worked with a really fun dual-tone colour palette and I really liked the Tigris aesthetic that they built.”

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Whether there will be future films to further explore how Tom Blyth’s promising, potential-filled young Coriolanus Snow of the new film evolves into the dastardly despot played by Donald Sutherland that audiences loved to hate in the original films will no doubt come to how well The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes does at the box office. But Schafer only wants one question answered.

“I want to know how I got a tiger face,” she says with a laugh. “That would be great.”

The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes is out now. Euphoria is now streaming on BINGE.