Meet Hunter Schafer, set to star in the Hunger Games prequel: the trans icon rose to fame in Euphoria, is one of Zendaya’s BFFs, and recently modelled for Prada alongside Kendall Jenner
- The Euphoria actress will play Tigris Snow in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but OG cast members Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth won’t be in the prequel
- Schafer started out as a fashion model for the likes of Dior, Prada and Marc Jacobs, and has walked the runway alongside Kendall Jenner, Kaia Gerber and Winnie Harlow
Five years later, Collins released her book, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and film company Lionsgate recently confirmed that it will be adapted into a feature film for the big screen.
Set decades before it became the tyrannical state of Panem as we know it, the story follows a young Coriolanus Snow, before his role as the city’s dictatorial president. Although Jennifer Lawrence (who played the lead role of Katniss Everdeen in the original films) and co-stars Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth and Woody Harrelson will not be starring in the prequel, the new production has made way for rising stars to blaze a new path in the hopes of continuing the successful saga.
But what else do we know about her so far?
She was raised in a conservative state
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1999 to conservative parents, Schafer grew up in a state of majority Republican-voting red counties, which wasn’t ideal for her progressive attitude. “I have to be honest – I was not thrilled!” she told i-D. “Everything I was interested in was happening in big cities. And it’s all I wanted, all the time … I had these really vivid dreams of what I wanted to achieve.”
Although she reportedly has three younger siblings, Schafer rarely talks about her childhood or family. Nevertheless, she once praised her mother to Harper’s Bazaar, describing her as “amazing” and saying that she cries every time she talks about her. “She’s just really powerful,” she added.
In 2017, she famously made headlines for being part of the federal lawsuit against her state’s “bathroom bill”, a proposed law that requires individuals to use the bathroom based on the gender of their birth certificate. She was the youngest plaintiff in the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal’s case, and told Teen Vogue that her aim was to “represent other transgender youth in North Carolina who are as hurt as I am, and to raise awareness and acceptance for transgender individuals”.