With the third season of Euphoria on pause until 2025, Hunter Schafer has been building up her resume. Last year, she starred in the Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and this year she had a small role in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness. But before all of that, Schafer filmed the horror flick Cuckoo in the summer of 2022, her first real movie experience since being cast on Euphoria in 2019.
Dan Stevens, who plays the mysterious hotel owner Herr König, told Vanity Fair that the Cuckoo set was very different from what Schafer is used to. “Her only experience prior to this was working on Euphoria, which is a very, very different experience, and by all accounts, not a terribly pleasant one,” he said. “I think it was refreshing and delightful for her to realize that not every job needs to be like Euphoria.”
While Schafer herself hasn’t alluded to any sort of problems on the set of Euphoria, many cast and crew members have spoken out about the dismal on-set conditions of the HBO show. The third season is expected to go into production next year.
Stevens added, “It was nice to be able to present that and to be a part of that. We can still shoot this incredibly f*cked-up, difficult scene, but everybody’s still friends at the end of the day and nobody needs to have months of therapy afterwards.” It’s not entirely clear if Euphoria really led to months of therapy, but it would not be that far-fetched based on reports.
Schafer hasn’t opened up too much about the upcoming season of Euphoria, mostly because she doesn’t know what’s going on. On a recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Shafer honestly admitted, “The real tea is I have no f*cking idea what’s going on, and you can ask literally all of the cast.”
She continued, “I think everyone feels a certain sense of anticipation for if we are supposed to do season 3. Obviously I’m still coming to terms about what’s happened and losing people that we really loved and were a part of this family and everything. If we do go back, that’s going to be tough.”
Cuckoo is now in theaters.