Hunter Schafer on working with 'Cuckoo' co-star Dan Stevens: Everyone wanted to see 'what he was going to pull out of his weird little pockets'
Schafer said "Cuckoo" was one of the first film scripts she “fell in love with.”
For Euphoria star and model Hunter Schafer, taking on her first film role in Tilman Singer’s horror flick Cuckoo scared her. It was the lead role, after all, and much like the film itself, she wasn’t sure what to expect.
“I knew it was going to feel different from TV, and I was definitely a bit nervous too, feeling the weight of having to really deliver and being in most of the scenes in the movie,” Schafer told Yahoo Entertainment. “But I think as soon as I got there, to [the set in] Germany, and even before getting to know Tilman, a lot of that sort of faded away.”
Schafer said Cuckoo, which was shot in 2022, was one of the first film scripts she “fell in love with.”
“Tillman, seeing his work, I just wanted to be a part of it in any capacity,” she said.
In the film, which opens in theaters Aug. 9, Schafer stars as 17-year-old Gretchen, a disgruntled teen who arrives in the Bavarian Alps with her father, his second wife and their daughter for an extended stay.
As the blended family connects with Dan Stevens’s mysterious character, Herr K?nig, who runs the resort where they’re staying and where Gretchen’s dad will lead a project, strange things start to happen. Women get sick. Gretchen is told to be home before dark. Her younger half-sister, who is mute, begins having seizures. There are time loops, and Herr K?nig makes curious use of his ubiquitous flute. Is Gretchen going, well, cuckoo, or is something more sinister going on?
Balancing the drama and fear factor with an undercurrent of dark humor was key, Stevens told Yahoo, which helped counterbalance the intensity in a way “that the audience are not quite sure where they sit.”
“My favorite horror films have a kind of a wicked sense of humor underneath them,” Stevens said. “If they take themselves too seriously or if it's just relentlessly one-note, I don't really get onboard. And so it's usually the sense of humor of the filmmaker that I enjoy kind of tapping into. And I think Tilman does have a wicked sense of humor.”
That sense of humor carried over on set too, according to Schafer.
“It really felt like summer camp. I would do it again a million times,” she said, calling Stevens’s German accent, which he adopted for the film, and character portrayal “magic.”
“I think everyone was so excited every day he came to work to see what he was going to pull out of his weird little pockets, you know, what he was going to do that day,” she said. “It was so exciting and kept us on our toes. And it was f***ing hilarious too.”
While this was Schafer’s first film role, the veteran actor known, for his roles in Downton Abbey and Beauty and the Beast, said he felt as though he were learning from her.
“It's incredibly exciting to work with somebody who is as engaged and committed but also with such a good sense of playfulness and humor to it,” he said. “You don't want to work with jaded people like me all the time. It's fun to kind of be around that sort of energy.”
If there was anything unexpected about her first film role, Schafer said it was the action scenes that kept her on her toes.
“I had never really done this much action before, and I learned that I love filming action on this set. It's so physical,” she said. “You can kind of get out of your head and just be in your body for those scenes. And that's a sensation that I really loved.”
She has since followed up Cuckoo with the 2023 release The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and this year’s Kinds of Kindness, but the actress is no stranger to television. She’s currently working on sci-fi limited series Blade Runner 2099, but it was Euphoria where she got her start. On the Max series, Schafer plays Jules Vaughn, a trans girl who is best friends and a love interest of Rue, played by Zendaya.
Schafer, who is trans herself, has been a strong LGBTQ advocate since childhood, and as a high school student spoke out against North Carolina’s HB2 bill that centered on single-sex public restrooms. However, in recent years, she has sought to distance herself from playing only trans characters onscreen.
“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 told GQ in April.
With the character Gretchen, who is cisgender, “it was a nonfactor,” Schafer said.
“It's not a thing in the movie. And so that's just my own stuff in my life that I get to leave behind when I go to work and be Gretchen, which was cool and exciting,” she explained.
As for what’s next for Schafer, East Highland High School is calling her name. Euphoria is now set to resume production in January after a nearly three-year hiatus.
“Yeah, I just found out,” she said when she spoke to Yahoo on July 26. “I'm filming a TV show right now. And then as soon as that wraps, I'm going to jump into Euphoria. It's going to be a crazy year.”
Cuckoo is in theaters Aug. 9.
