Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer joins Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in key role
Hunter Schafer, Euphoria’s breakout star, is set to continue soaring. (Emma McIntyre/WireImage)
Hunter Schafer is about to go from Euphoria to Panem, with a key role in the upcoming Hunger Games prequel.
The 23-year-old, who has won critical acclaim for her portrayal of Jules in the steamy HBO series, has been cast in Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Variety reported.
Schafer will play Tigris Snow, the cousin of cold dictator-to-be Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), in the new Lionsgate film slated to hit cinemas on 17 November, 2023
In the 2020 book of the same name by Suzanne Collins, Tigris is one of several mentoring characters who try to keep Coriolanus ever so slightly moral as he passes the time between getting good grades at school and plotting world domination.
Schafer’s character made a brief appearance in the last Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay Part 2, as a distinguished Hunger Games stylist who has distanced herself from her cousin. She was played by Eugenie Bondurant.
Hunter Schaefer as Jules in Euphoria. (Eddy Chen/HBO)
Hunter Schaefer will star alongside Blyth and Rachel Zegler in Songbirds and Snakes which will be set 64 years before the events of the original trilogy.
Set in a bruised Panem, still in the dark days of rebuilding after the districts’ failed rebellion against the Capital, Coriolanus is not quite the plush ruler he was in the trilogy – instead, he’s a down-on-his-luck teenager who thinks rubbish is a luxury in the rubble-filled world he calls home.
Coriolanus is then picked to be a mentor for Lucy Gray Barid (Zegler), a young tribute for the 10th annual Hunger Games from the poverty-stricken District 12.
It’s safe to say Hunter Schafer has come far since she debuted in Euphoria. The show premiered in 2019, but a second season was delayed by the pandemic, with only two episodes airing between 2019 and 2022.
A model who once sued North Carolina for the state’s anti-trans bathroom law, Schafer told i-D in February that the show became a “lifeline” for her during lockdown as she experienced a severe bout of depression.
“I was in a very f**king raw place, you know, it was the summer of 2020,” Schafer recalled. “Probably coming out of the worst depression I’ve ever had, and needing somewhere to put all of that energy.”
Euphoria’s January 2021 special, “F**k Anyone Who’s Not A Sea Blob“, which Schafer co-wrote, became a light in the dark for her.
“When I say that episode really became a lifeline, I mean it,” she said.
