‘Euphoria’: Hunter Schafer calls Jules a special ‘cathartic’

Warning: this post contains spoilers for this week’s special episode of “Euphoria”.

Hunter Schafer spent half an hour screaming, sobbing and slamming his body against the door while recording the last episode of “Euphoria”.

The 22-year-old actress described it as the “most physically demanding scene” she has ever filmed for the brave HBO drama, which became known during its first season for graphic depictions of violence, sex and hard drugs. This sequence involved none of the above – just Schafer in the character Jules, a locked door and a devastating fear of what awaited him on the other side.

The harrowing sequence of dreams occurs near the end of Friday’s “Euphoria” special, which shows Jules in a prolonged state of vulnerability and introspection. During the intense nightmare, Jules arrives at his imaginary apartment in New York to find his high school soulmate, Rue (Zendaya), alone and indifferent in his bathroom.

Jules’ increasingly desperate pleas to “open the door” are met with a sinister silence – an extension of last month’s episode, which saw Rue’s self-destructive medium collapse in its shared dream landscape.

“It was like letting Jules’ worst imagination take over,” Schafer said during a video call in New York City. “Which was really difficult, because even I personally love Rue deeply and I don’t like to think about the images that I had to imagine in my head and sit for that scene.”

Now aired on HBO Max, the episode continues Schafer’s creative evolution. The Raleigh, NC native spent her late teenage years working in New York as a sought-after runway model before making her debut as an actress in 2019 with “Euphoria”, in which she plays the sparkling new girl in the city who develops a romance and sometimes toxic relationship with your drug addict best friend. Schafer also co-wrote and co-produced the episode, entitled “F— Anyone other than a Sea Blob”, with creator and showrunner Sam Levinson.

“Sam is super collaborative and has been from the beginning,” says Schafer. “He really wants all of us, as actors, to have a contribution to our characters and their livelihood.

“Taking this to the next level with really having a hand in that [Jules is] saying – and also in an episode that allows us to stay with her for a much longer period of time than we ever did in season 1 – it was really exciting. “

Filmed in October, “F— Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob” continues after the end of the exciting first season, which saw Jules run away from home to the city, leaving a disturbed Rue in its wake. Now, Jules is back in the suburbs – and in therapy – to undo the trauma that led to the climax of her escape.

While discussing the one-hour character study dialogue, Schafer and Levinson took turns pretending to be Jules and his therapist, wondering what could come up in the conversation between a counselor and a 17-year-old in crisis.

“I would say that a lot of the episode – particularly the therapy session – was born out of us just riffs and maybe accidentally falling into the character while we were talking on the phone,” says Schafer. “There is an element of the game that I didn’t understand about writing before. In fact, we were just acting on the phone, and I found it very useful and fun to contribute to the script. “

The collaboration was therapeutic, not only for Jules, but also for Schafer, who struggled to adjust to quarantined life. The production of the second season of “Euphoria” was postponed just three days before the date set to start in March and a “perhaps too optimistic” Schafer did not foresee spending months alone.

“It was a rude awakening,” she says. “I think we were all clinging to the hope that [the pandemic] it would be something that would last maybe, like, a month or two. And then it started to disappear too. We all simply surrender to quarantine and stew in our homes. “

An avowed workaholic, Schafer was forced to slow down and solve mental health problems that had been lurking “under the surface for a long time”.

“Having to actually sit down with myself and not having a goal was scary and brought up a lot of things that I might not have processed yet,” she says. “I’m on medication now and I feel more myself than ever … It sucked at the time because it was really a kind of accident and burn, but I’m really grateful for that.”

The key to Schafer’s healing process was to resume work on “Euphoria” in a new creative role. Shortly after Levinson wrote the series ‘first holiday special, starring Zendaya as Rue, he and Schafer started generating ideas for a continuation of Jules’ perspective.

Schafer shared with him a poem she wrote when she graduated from high school:

“It was about this strange spiral that I was having with hormone therapy and making an analogy between learning how to find beauty inside you,” says Schafer, who, like his character, is trans. “Like, instead of wanting to be as beautiful as another cis woman, wanting to be as beautiful as something even bigger, like the ocean.”

Schafer’s reflection became the inspiration for “F— Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob”, during which Jules considers losing his hormones after coming to the self-critical realization that “he shaped all his femininity around men”

“Being trans is spiritual” for her, Jules explains to her therapist, and she doesn’t want to “stay put”.

“She is rightly going through a questioning of [herself] and decisions [she’s] done before – not because they were wrong in any way, but just because she is evolving as a human being and is beginning to understand herself in a deeper way, ”says Schafer.

“Gender and self-expression are incredibly fluid and incredibly changing,” she continues. “And I think it’s very emotional … and psychological in a way that is outside the political gender roles of, like, male and female. These are not … a fun or fruitful way to think about how to inhabit your gender. “

In addition to the therapy session, the episode features a mix of dream and fantasy sequences – like the apartment nightmare – as well as flashbacks that provide more information about Jules’ complex relationships with his mother and Rue, both struggling with addiction.

“Euphoria” had already offered glimpses of Jules’ traumatic story with his mother, who is absent from the show. But Friday’s article makes an explicit link between Jules’s turbulent upbringing and anxieties about Rue’s fragile control over sobriety.

“Jules doesn’t actively think about it much because it bothers her and hurts her,” says Schafer of Jules’ mother’s absence. “It makes sense, in a way, that she and Rue got together … also, it makes sense why they have the conflicts they have, as there are many parallels between what Jules’s mother was going through and what Rue is passing. “

The end of Friday’s episode shows Rue and Jules (affectionately nicknamed #Rules by fans) briefly reconnecting for the first time since the end of season 1. But it is not exactly a fairytale gathering.

“I know Jules would have done anything to be held or to hold Rue again at that moment, after everything that happened,” says Schafer.

“Rue is not able to do that at that moment, and perhaps Jules was not, either. But … you can say that there is still a vulnerable and raw love between them. “

Although his midpandemic material was heavy, even by “Euphoria” standards, Schafer was eager to return to act alongside Zendaya, fresh from his historic victory as a lead actress at the 2020 Emmy Awards

“It was difficult,” said Schafer. “But she is also the stage partner with whom I spent more time and with whom I shared more emotionally, so I always feel very comfortable with her and excited to see what happens, because we both love our characters so much and we love her connections. . “

Schafer was careful to reveal what is in store for the pair in season 2, just sharing the two will “reexamine their relationship”. (“This is so vague!”, She says, laughing. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get in trouble!”)

It is not yet clear when Schafer will be able to revisit Jules – no announcement has been made about when the second season will resume production. But there may be more writings in Schafer’s future.

“This was genuinely the most cathartic artistic experience I have ever had,” she says. “It was very special to be able to put so much of yourself in one product.”