Hunter Schafer was “nervous” about making her movie debut in the upcoming horror Cuckoo.
The actress, who made her acting debut in the TV show Euphoria, stars alongside Dan Stevens and Jessica Henwick in the horror, which follows a family who moves to a resort where things are not what they seem.
The film, which was shot in Germany in 2022, marked the first time Hunter had stepped on a movie set and the first time she had worked with creators besides Euphoria’s Sam Levinson.
She admitted to GQ that that she was concerned about her acting skills translating into an entirely different project.
“I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to deliver the same kind of performance with completely new people in a new country, on a new set, and on a completely different format of filmmaking,” she explained. “There were these barriers that I felt like I had to break. It was like having the training wheels off.”
Thankfully, the experience proved to Hunter, 25, that she had “figured out the craft of acting”.
“It’s not this terrifying thing that I feel like I’ve been thrown into, I get it,” she said. “I can really find some levity and some joy in it.”
Her co-star Dan was full of praise for Hunter, noting that he wouldn’t have known it was her first film if she hadn’t told him.
“You could see her grow into the role and almost grow into herself in terms of (realising), Oh, I can do this,” he added.
Hunter was first seen on the big screen in last year’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which she filmed after Cuckoo. Her upcoming films include Kinds of Kindness and Mother Mary.