Hunter Schafer is stepping into the biggest role of her career — and the cover of ELLE's November 2026 issue. The Euphoria star, 27, sits for an exclusive interview with Lotte Jeffs timed to her first television lead: Cora in Blade Runner 2099, the long-awaited follow-up to one of cinema's most influential sci-fi worlds.
As Cora, a human masquerading as a replicant Blade Runner, Schafer tells ELLE, "I smile maybe twice." It's an impressively restrained performance in a demanding role, and Schafer is thoughtful about the franchise's aesthetic. "I think a lot of things that portray the future can feel sterile or clean, where everything's perfect and fascist and robotic," she says. "The androids in Blade Runner are kind of nuts and artistic and messy, which I think is more accurate."
The interview goes deep on personal ground too. "I just had bottom surgery in December, which was amazing, and I love it so much," Schafer says of her gender-affirming operation. "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 bad-a** about it." She also takes on anti-trans bathroom laws in the U.K. and beyond with characteristic bluntness: "That's why these laws are so f**king stupid. You can make it the law, but are you deploying a little gender policeman to stand outside the bathrooms?"
Navigating her late twenties under the unpredictable glare of fame, Schafer emerges in the ELLE profile as one of her generation's most distinctive voices — an actor and model who treats honesty as a creative discipline. Blade Runner 2099 gives her the canvas; the interview shows she knows exactly what to do with it.
Photo: Harald Krichel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)