Hunter Schafer has gone public with news that she underwent gender-affirming bottom surgery last December.
The “Euphoria” alum, 27, opened up about the operation in an Elle magazine interview published Monday, calling the experience “amazing” and declaring, “I love it so much.”
Schafer began transitioning at age 14, and for years she tried to embrace a more fluid relationship with her body. “For a long time I’ve embraced the gender-expansive part of myself, and I really wanted to try to make that previous body work, because I thought there was something really cool and badass about it,” she reflected in the Elle interview.
That philosophy has since given way to certainty. “I’m a woman. I’m a girl,” she said.
The surgery marks a significant evolution in how Schafer publicly discusses her gender identity. Back in 2024, she told GQ magazine that she was weary of being defined by her transness and actively avoided trans-specific roles. “I don’t want to be [reduced to] that, and I find it ultimately demeaning to me and what I want to do,” she said at the time. “Especially after high school, I was sick of talking about it. I worked so hard to get to where I am, past these really hard points in my transition, and now I just want to be a girl and finally move on.”
She continued in that same GQ interview, “It’s a privilege, but it’s been very intentional. I’ve gotten offered tons of trans roles, and I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Her position has since shifted considerably. In the new Elle interview, Schafer expressed enthusiasm about potentially starring in a “trans girl rom-com,” a project she said she has been considering for some time. “I’ve been thinking about that for a while,” she shared. “I would like to make that happen.”
Schafer also addressed the broader challenge of reconciling queer theory with lived experience. She described struggling with the tension between “queerness as an idea and philosophy versus how it applies and works in real life, in the context of the world that we’re living in.”
The December 2025 surgery represents what Schafer indicated was ultimately the right decision for her, even after years of attempting to make her pre-operative body align with her self-image.
Schafer first rose to prominence playing Jules Vaughn on HBO’s “Euphoria,” the critically acclaimed series created by Sam Levinson. Her performance as a transgender teenager navigating love, addiction, and identity earned her widespread recognition and helped establish her as one of Hollywood’s most visible young trans actresses.
Her 2024 GQ comments about wanting to “finally move on” from discussing her transition drew considerable attention at the time, making her current openness about the surgery and her willingness to engage with trans-themed projects a notable reversal.
The Elle interview finds Schafer embracing both her womanhood and a renewed connection to trans narratives, albeit on her own terms and through genres like romantic comedy rather than the heavy drama that has often defined trans stories on screen.
Schafer did not specify a timeline for the romantic comedy project she hopes to develop.