There are feline instincts, and then there is utter devotion. Barbie Ferreira is proving the point during a Zoom conversation in early February, animatedly leaning in to describe her day-old tattoo. “It’s a silhouette of Morty completely shaded in, so it hurts so bad,” the actor says of her new ink, situated high up on her leg—the second tattoo from her partner, Elle Puckett. (The first, given early in the pandemic, was a spiral to memorialize a very relatable mental state.) Morty, short for Mortimer, is Ferreira’s Sphynx cat, a stoic, wrinkly wonder with ice-blue eyes. “He’s my literal life and soul and everything. My other cats too, don’t worry”—Ferreira, sitting in a New York hotel room, sounds as if she’s speaking to Magdalena and Thomas back home in Los Angeles—“but he’s my eldest son.” Getting the likeness just right was particularly important, Morty being a hairless cat, with no fur or pretenses to hide behind. Puckett nailed it. “It looks just like him!” Ferreira beams.
The choice of imagery seems appropriate for Ferreira, who plays Kat Hernandez on HBO’s Euphoria, the stylized pit of teen despair now in the midst of its second season. (The show, created by Sam Levinson and brilliantly acted by its ensemble cast, was just renewed.) In her season one arc, Kat navigates a wave of social tumult and self-actualization by moonlighting as KittenKween: a cam girl disguised by a gold-trimmed black-cat mask, as if harnessing her own bad luck. By season two, Kat’s dominatrix streak is behind her; the empowerment high has netted her a nice-guy boyfriend, but she is, to use a word, spiraling behind her powder-blue eye shadow and vampy lipstick. Maybe this coming undone is a prelude to a more solid way forward for Kat, I float to Ferreira. “Knowing Euphoria, I don’t know if rosy is in the cards for anybody,” she replies.
But for Ferreira, the future is looking bright. She’s officially a homeowner (the place is undergoing renovations) and lives in practically married bliss. (“Oh, Elle—I love Elle so much,” the actor sighs. “I’ve never had someone witness me like that, in a lot of ways. It’s very beautiful. They’re, like, my first real love.”) Coming up in July, Ferreira will appear in writer-director Jordan Peele’s third feature, Nope—what can only be another genre-redefining horror movie—starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun. And today, Ferreira celebrates a new role with YSL Beauty, whose volumizing Lash Clash mascara is making it impossible to ignore the actor’s flutter each time she leans into the screen—like the poster for A Clockwork Orange, if only the narrator were an uninhibited charmer.
“I have a high-contrast face, which I learned from TikTok, so my lashes love mascara,” says Ferreira, whose presence on Euphoria has made her an icon for of-the-moment makeup. Here, the actor reflects on that transformative role, her trash-camp aesthetic, and what it feels like on the far side of the body-positive conversation.
Vanity Fair: This season on Euphoria, there is that uncomfortable moment when Kat is having dinner with her boyfriend’s parents and she spirals out after the mother says, “Tell me about yourself.” So, Barbie: Tell me about yourself.
Barbie Ferreira: Oh my gosh. “I don’t know who I am,” right? I don’t remember my line. [laughs] About me, I’m 25. I live in L.A. but I’m from New York. I have three cats and maybe will have a dog soon. I like interior design, I like acting, I like fashion, I like horror movies, and I like TikTok. What else? I’m an only child, and I spend a lot of my time hanging out.
A dog! That’s fun.
I’ve been obsessed with a Pekinese, so let’s see! I want a Pekinese.
How has it been to play the Euphoria character who has a very interior struggle, set against the falling-down drama of her friends?
I love Kat so much. She means the world to me in a lot of ways, so it’s kind of bringing in some of my life into season two. The camming is something that was done with in the first season, with her getting scared [by] the cam guy who was buying all her stuff; it was really creepy, so she didn’t want to touch that anymore. Now she has this relationship that’s perfect—everyone says it’s perfect, quote-unquote—and she’s feeling the restlessness of that.
Ferreira, as Kat Hernandez, in a season two Euphoria look.
Courtesy of HBO.I think of season one as a big trauma for Kat, and kind of a turning point in feeling invisible and getting what she thinks she wants and then what she actually wants, and then not understanding and disappearing into an alter-ego that didn’t solve anything. The only thing it did was kind of push it deeper in.