'People I've known for years were spilling secrets to me'

‘Euphoria’ star Barbie Ferreira talks to Ellie Muir about the startling reaction to her new film, her female role models in the industry, and the impact of growing up without a father

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Barbie Ferreira is the ultimate post-internet It-girl, a straight-up Gen Z phenomenon. Before she vaulted to stardom on HBO's debauched teen drama Euphoria, she had already been named among Time magazine's most influential teens of 2016, along with gymnast Simone Biles and Game of Thrones’s Maisie Williams.

Her impressive modelling career for luxury fashion labels turned her into a body positivity advocate – and a role model for girls in the process. By 19, she had conquered internet fame, thanks to her viral grungey Tumblr account plastered with selfies taken sprawled across her sofa, pouting in dark purple lipstick, a silver septum ring between her nostrils. Becoming a revelation on the buzziest high-school drama since Skins, then, felt like it was already written in the stars.

As Euphoria’s Kat Hernandez – pal to Alexa Demie’s highschool bombshell Maddy Perez – Ferreira conveyed a striking naturalism as the bold yet fragile teen who reinvents herself as an internet dominatrix. Then she played the stooge to Haley Lu Richardson’s immaculate prom queen Veronica Clarke in the 2020 abortion film Unpregnant.

The problem was, though, that Ferreira was so captivating as the “mysterious goth best friend” that Hollywood didn’t see her as anything else. Since she exited Euphoria in a haze of controversy in 2022, she has been turning down offers to play a regurgitated version of that sidekick character.

“I got a lot of things sent to me that were repetitive in that way,” Ferreira says from a pistachio-hued sofa in Los Angeles, her sphynx cat pawing across her lap. “I had this moment in my career a few years ago, where I was like, OK... In Hollywood, people lack a little bit of creativity when it comes to casting people. To me, that’s not exciting.”

She’s decidedly un-gothic today, in a buttermilk-yellow blouse, with subtle makeup and her brunette