Hunter Schafer has undergone bottom surgery, the “Euphoria” star revealed.
“I just had bottom surgery in December, which was amazing, and I love it so much,” Schafer told Elle magazine, referring to the gender-affirming operation that alters a person’s genitals to align with their gender identity.
“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 said. But, according to Elle, Schafer described “hitting a wall again and again where this theoretical queer utopia didn’t match up with the world she encountered every day, and the way she personally wanted to show up in it.” And so while every trans person is different, a medical transition was the right decision for Schafer.
Schafer described that ability to evolve as the “magical thing about queerness” — that “on an ideological level, it’s about possibility and expansion and growth, and being on that journey and finding yourself.” While she had always viewed her gender identity as more fluid, she has now landed somewhere “flatter,” she described. “I’m a woman. I’m a girl,” she said. Coming to that conclusion required Schafer to wrestle with queerness as a philosophy “versus how it applies and works in real life, in the context of the world that we’re living in.” She said, “I feel like there’s always a tension there.”
Schafer described her recovery from bottom surgery in early 2026, noting that she rented a big apartment and had friends and family visit while she was required to lie flat. “I think my limit was 150 steps per day, which is nothing,” she said of her doctor’s orders.
Schafer, who will next be seen opposite Michelle Yeoh in the Amazon miniseries “Blade Runner 2099,” spoke a couple of years ago about not wanting her identity to overshadow her work, saying she herself had tried to avoid saying the word “trans” during interviews. “It has not just happened naturally by any means. If I let it happen, it would still be giving ‘Transsexual Actress’ before every article ever,” Schafer told GQ in 2024.
“As soon as I say it, it gets blastoff,” she added about when the word “trans” comes up in her interviews. “It took a while to learn that and it also took a while to learn that I don’t want to be [reduced to] that, and I find it ultimately demeaning to me and what I want to do. 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.”
Schafer acknowledged in that interview that “it’s a privilege” to be able to shift focus beyond her gender identity, saying: “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.”
“I know for a fact that I’m one of the most famous trans people in media right now, and I do feel a sense of responsibility, and maybe a little bit of guilt, for not being more of a spokesperson,” Schafer concluded. “But ultimately, I really do believe that not making it the centerpiece to what I’m doing will allow me to get further. And I think getting further and doing awesome shit, in the interest of ‘the movement,’ will be way more helpful than talking about it all the time.”
Schafer’s first acting rule was Jules in the HBO smash hit “Euphoria,” which made her a celebrity — and a role model for trans people — in her early 20s. Her other roles include “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and the Neon horror movie “Cuckoo.”