Many actors would feel burned out toward the end of a press tour — but not Chloe Cherry, who is refreshingly excited about having to promote her work.
“I just felt like such a professional actor, honestly. I was like, ‘wow, look at me in New York City doing press for my show. I’m booked up and I’m doing all the press,’” she says. “I felt like it was just so deeply validating as an actor.”
The 28-year-old stars as Faye in “Euphoria,” a character that was introduced in the second season and elevated in the third one, airing now. Season Three Faye is the biggest role of Cherry’s yet, having previously worked in the adult entertainment industry, and she’s relishing every moment of the experience.
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Cherry was initially scouted to join the show’s second season by a casting company with a cold email.
“They sent me an email and they were like, ‘Hey, we’re casting for Season Two, the director has interest in you auditioning for this role,’” she recalls. “I didn’t believe it. I was like, ‘What? Why would the director of a show want me? I’m not a famous actor.’”
She knew her character was a heroin user, so began “researching the f–k out of Kurt Cobain because he was the one person I knew for sure had been on heroin,” she says. After the first go, the show’s creator Sam Levinson asked her to try it again, but be more like herself.
“And then he goes, ‘I knew you would be good,’” she says.
She credits her online persona from that time as having helped her stand out to Levinson and the rest of the team.
“Back when I was way younger, when I was in the porn industry, I was known within the porn industry for having a really funny Instagram. And then Sam Levinson just happened to be somebody who decided to watch my Instagram stories and see what my personality was like,” she says. “At the time I was just doing it because I was just bored. So I was just posting all the time, every random thought. And then I guess the right person ended up seeing it.”
In Season Three, Faye becomes a sidekick to Zendaya’s character Rue, before getting romantically involved with a member of the drug dealing family Rue worked for.
“I’m going to be really honest. My first reaction when I saw the racism that Faye’s boyfriend character Wayne expresses, I literally almost was like, ‘I can’t do this,’” Cherry says of the Season Three storyline. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll go pretty far on-screen, but that’s my limit by far, racism.’ But then I was like, ‘OK, I’m hoping that I can portray it in a way that makes racist people look really stupid, and how wrong the racism that’s in the current political climate is.”
Cherry was told she’d be in the third season of the show way back when they were wrapping Season Two, in 2021. She then had to keep it a secret for several years.
“I remember in June 2024, I went to the Tribeca Film Festival and every time anybody talked to me, they would just be like, ‘so what’s going on with ‘Euphoria?’’ And I remember at this one point, I was like, ‘well, I absolutely cannot say that we’re going to shoot it and it’s going to be awesome. And Season Three is definitely coming,’ because that goes against my NDA,” Cherry says. “So what my brain came up with was to just go, ‘they don’t talk to me. I have zero communication with anybody who has ever been around ‘Euphoria.’”
She had to spend years dismissing the discourse over the likelihood of the show’s now very famous cast, including Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer and Maude Apatow, returning for another season.
“So many of my friends kept telling me, ‘there’s no f–king way that Sydney and Zendaya are going to come back for that. I’m like, ‘What do you think that people are so f–king busy doing once they’re famous?’ They still have to go do jobs. They’re still contracted to things and they’re also paying them millions of dollars,” Cherry says. “They’re so good. They’re actors. They’re going to do their job. They’re not treating it as like, ‘oh, what? You guys think I’m too cool for the show?’”
With the third season nearly over, Cherry is looking ahead. In June, her new movie “Find Your Friends” will be released, which follows a group of young women on a girls’ trip in the desert that goes wrong.
“I’d love to do a dramatic role. I’d love to explore a character that was kind of like Michelle Williams’ character in ‘Manchester by the Sea,’ or Scarlett Johansson’s character in ‘A Marriage Story,’” Cherry says. “Something that explores interpersonal dynamics and emotions very deeply.”