‘Euphoria’ made her a star. Now she’s diving into the internet’s darkest corners.

Barbie Ferreira isn’t any stranger to darkish topic issues (Euphoriaanybody?). But now, she’s stepping into her horror period — and it feels actually well-timed.

in Faces of Deathin theaters nationwide on April 10, Ferreira performs Margot, a content material moderator for a main video platform tasked with reviewing the internet’s most graphic movies. It’s a premise that sounds till excessive you take into account how a lot of that content material already exists at our fingertips. The movie, which reads into the 1978 authentic’s notorious “Is it real or not?” conceit, faucets into a bigger cultural shift: the rising blur between what’s actual, what’s staged and what we have merely discovered to scroll previous.

Ferreira would not see the thought as far-fetched. If something, she thinks the tradition has already caught up.

“I grew up on the internet. I like to call myself a guinea pig of my generation,” she tells Yahoo. “I’m a very old Gen Z — you could even call me a cusp millennial — so I was really part of the first batch of children who had access to it.”

That outlook comes with a sort of double imaginative and prescient, one wherein the shock issue that after outlined on-line tradition has slowly worn off. “It was a very different world back then, and I can’t tell if it’s better or worse — I actually can’t,” she says. “What used to feel shocking is now so normalized.”

The function arrives at a second of transition for Ferreira, who was catapulted into the highlight when Euphoria premiered in 2019. She broke out as Kat Hernandez, a fan-favorite character whose arc explored identification, confidence and web infamy in actual time.

Now, a few years faraway from the present — which she exited after its second season in 2023 — Ferreira is shifting into a completely different part. The initiatives are darker, the decisions extra deliberate, and their relationship with visibility, particularly on-line, is shifting too.

“There’s this feeling that we’re all under surveillance,” she says. “When actors are a little too personal and people know you too much, it’s hard to suspend disbelief.”

Ahead, Ferreira opens up about unwinding with Nickelodeon, navigating fame in the web age and what it is like to observe Euphoria from the exterior — similar to the remainder of us.

You’re taking part in somebody who has to observe disturbing content material for a residing. What was the hardest a part of stepping into that headspace?

During the filming of it, I actually needed to be in additional of a darker headspace. [Ferreira’s character] Margot not solely had this unimaginable trauma that was very viral and really public, but additionally her job includes her watching sort of the worst of the worst on the web always in fast succession — nearly such as you’re going by TikTok.

I simply thought of how extremely affecting that may be. So what I did was I listened to a lot of actually darkish materials. I used to be listening to Hunting Warheadwhich is a podcast about taking down a large little one abuse ring on the black market. It was simply very, very darkish — extraordinarily darkish true crime about the web and the way pervasive that may be.

I’d watch previous web movies of accidents and actually horrifying issues that I sometimes would not be watching at 7 am on a Tuesday. But as a result of I’m an actor and that is what I like to do, I used to be actually going by all of that.

What did you do to unwind and shake that off at the finish of the day?

After the film, I needed to do the precise reverse. I got here again to LA and I solely had a little little bit of time earlier than my subsequent film, so I watched a lot of spongebob, That’s So Raven — every part that might probably make me really feel the precise reverse.

I’d truthfully go to sleep to Hotel Transylvania each evening simply to clear my head of the disturbing components of filming a horror film. Because regardless that it is pretend, your physique would not actually register that whenever you’re lined in blood. So it was a lot of youngsters’s tv to decompress.

While we’re on the topic of boundary-pushing content material, Euphoria It was so stunning when it first got here out. Season 3 is about to premiere. Do you suppose it nonetheless hits the identical approach now?

I feel when it first got here out, I actually keep in mind how shocked individuals had been that there was this degree of intercourse and violence and abuse being portrayed. I have not watched Season 1 in so lengthy as a result of it is extremely efficient — it hurts me to observe at occasions. But I’m certain it will nonetheless discover methods to rustle feathers prefer it at all times has.

Are you going to be watching this season?

Oh, I’ll positively be watching. I’m curious as a result of I do not know what is going on on.

Even after I see the ladies out and about, I do not suppose they know what is going on on both. They saved it very secret from the scripts, so I’m actually curious to see what is going on to occur.

You additionally get to observe the characters years later, so I’m actually . It’s going to be enjoyable.

Faces of Death faucets into one thing actually unsettling — the concept that we do not know what’s actual on-line anymore. Did it change the approach you personally take into consideration what you eat and even what you share?

What I actually cherished about the script was that even in 2023, after we shot this, it was so related — and it is solely grown in relevance since then.

It looks like yearly we’re desensitized to an increasing number of real-life violence that we’re always being proven and that is being pumped into us.

A 5-year-old may watch a video of somebody being murdered on their iPad, and it is one thing they’re used to.

So for me, it actually aligned with the film. It’s extra of a query than a message. How will we take part in all of this?

What’s your relationship with social media proper now? Has it shifted as your profession — and your visibility — has grown?

As quickly as I began performing professionally and actually devoted my life to it, I took a step again from the web. I really feel like when actors are a little too private and you realize them an excessive amount of, it is sort of exhausting to droop disbelief.

But I additionally suppose a lot of actors are attempting to determine their very own approach as a result of that is utterly new — not only for actors, however for everybody.

There’s this sense that we’re all underneath surveillance always.

Actors have by no means had this sort of entry to each single opinion of them anonymously like [they do] now. Imagine if Joan Crawford had an Instagram Live?

It’s a utterly new panorama to navigate, and I do not suppose there’s a concrete reply but. I do not even know if there ever will likely be. But yeah, it is fairly exhausting to be a public determine in the age of the web. At the identical time, I feel everybody feels that approach now — we’re all in it collectively.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.