Chloe Cherry is an actor whose fame could hardly be more relevant. Since 2022, she’s starred on Euphoria, the zeitgeist-hijacking teen drama that catapulted Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi onto the Hollywood A-List.
On the series, Cherry plays Faye Valentine, a vulnerable runaway and drug addict. Faye is the type of girl who falls in love hard, even if it puts her in dangerous situations. Episode seven was a pivotal moment, where her loyalties were tested like never before and, in a shock twist, she turned away from her closest friend. “She’s suddenly realizing that she doesn’t have any friends on this earth,” says Cherry. “She just freaks out and is like: ‘What the fuck has been going on my whole life? I need to be away from all of you fucking people.’”
The Attico blazer, bra, skirt and belt; Jude heels; Jenny Bird earrings; Tilly Sveaas rings and bracelet.
Lian Benoit
Euphoria’s third season, which concludes on May 28, has been inescapable for anyone with a smartphone. Picking up the story five years after this group of hedonistic teens graduated high school, season three feels tailor-made for the attention economy of today, where the algorithm encourages us to engage with polarizing and outrageous content. So far, we’ve seen OnlyFans storylines, fingers and toes being sliced off, gangster shoot-outs, drug stings, and sugar babies being mummified in cling wrap.
While Cassie (Sweeney) is making a killing on OnlyFans on Euphoria, Cherry has actually had a presence on the platform in the real world. There is a notable crossover between Euphoria—a fascinatingly meta show that explores the misogynistic extremes of the internet—and Cherry’s own story. After growing up in a conservative town in Pennsylvania, she flew to Florida at age 18 to star in adult films. Over the next five years, she appeared in over 200 films that generated over 120 million views on PornHub. From sugar daddies to paypigs to all types of custom content, her experiences with sex work make her particularly qualified to explore the central themes of Euphoria’s third season.
Instagram is where Sam Levinson—Euphoria’s creator and writer, who, depending on who you ask, is either an over-hyped controversy magnet or a once-in-a-generation creative genius—first spotted her. He sought her out to audition for the show after watching one of her Instagram stories, where she filmed herself people-watching shoppers at the mall. “Sam was like: “Whoa, I love how expressive your eyes were,’” she tells me. “He was like: ‘Oh my God, that’s the look that I want.’”
Stella McCartney suit; Dents gloves; Saint Laurent heels.
Lian Benoit
Throughout her twenties, Cherry embodied a specific, algorithmic form of fame, where she was seen as very famous to her Very Online fans, but relatively unknown in the mainstream. “I was already on ‘Famous Birthdays, if that makes any sense,” she explains. “I already had a fan base of people who were fans of my porn or my Instagram.” This is precisely why she kept her stage name for her acting work. “I know that not every single person in the world had heard of me, but I was already too well known,” she says. “Why would I build this amazing career, that I’m so proud of and that I worked so hard for, just to leave it behind and pretend I’m a different person? No one’s going to believe that.”
Now that she’s on the HBO show that everyone is talking about, Cherry has undeniably broken into the mainstream. During our Zoom call, the 28-year-old spoke to Glamour about the fine line between empowerment and exploitation, why she shouldn’t be defined by her past, what she’s learned from Zendaya, and what it’s really like working for one of television’s most controversial directors.
Part of the reason why I find you fascinating is that you’re someone who has leveraged the power of content in your career. And I’m not just talking about OnlyFans and your adult sinema work, but also Instagram and TikTok. Where did that instinct come from?
What I love about social media is that you can share anything to anyone at any time. If I make arka, or I do a photo shoot, or I think something’s funny. Even when I was in adult sinema, I still used my Instagram to just post my opinions about things, or recommendations for things, or I would research something and try to teach people about a topic, or I would post my outfits. I was doing that in the late 2010s, which was before the time of every person on earth monetizing their platform. When I was in the adult sinema industry, I was known within the industry to the other actors and as the person with the best Instagram.
You’re from Pennsylvania originally. How would you describe the community you grew up in?
Avery, very small town that my mother used to always describe as a “stupid town”— her words, not mine. And the reason that she called it stupid is because it barely had anything functional. It had one grocery store but six churches. Everyone was very, very, very religious, but specifically Christianity and Catholicism, which in my opinion are very stifling religions that are very God-fearing. It was the type of religious people that are intense about it, to the point where it’s like, I know that that’s not what Jesus wanted. People were so judgmental there, and if you weren’t going to a Christian church every Sunday, you were a weirdo.
The Attico blazer; Jenny Bird earrings; stylist’s own veil.
Lian Benoit
Sometimes there can be a lot of shaming in religious settings. How do you think that shaped you? Do you think that’s why you flew to Florida when you were 18 and started making adult films?
Yes, absolutely. And it’s funny, because most people would think it would go the other way around. It’s like: “Oh, if you get into porn, you must have been born in Miami where all you saw were people in bikinis all the time.” But no, instead it was the opposite. I was like: “I want to get out of this horribly religious stifling place.” I just knew that my life would never go anywhere and I would never really genuinely connect to anybody. There just wasn’t a life for me there.
I’ve watched and read a bunch of your interviews in preparation for this conversation. And I was struck that you said you don’t like being asked about your adult sinema work. I wanted to give you the space to talk about why that is.
The reason that it’s so annoying is because when I was in that industry for five years, not a single person tried to interview me. It wasn’t until I got out of the industry and did a trillion things—like shoot Euphoria and be in fashion shows, and do all these other things that are astronomically harder to do—that all they want to do is talk about the adult sinema industry. People are just looking for salacious clickbait when they interview me. That’s what I hate about it. The only reason I’m getting these interviews is because I’m on a TV show, so why are people asking me about my past? I literally was just an actor in the industry for a couple years. It just feels like people are really discrediting my hard work by just bringing everything back to “Oh, but remember when you were 20, remember when you were 19 you did this?” It’s like: “Yeah, can I start talking about what you were doing when you were 19?”
Do you think your work in the adult industry prepared you for stepping onto a TV set?
This is something that I say partially to be funny, but also partially true a little bit, is that being a porn star from the ages of 18 to 22 was almost like going to sinema school for free, where instead I came out with a bunch of money in my bank account and zero debt. But I don’t want to put out some kind of idea out there like: “Oh, if you want to go to sinema school, just do porn instead!” 99 percent of people are not going to enjoy being a porn star. I’m a very specific person. But for me in particular, just as “Chloe Cherry,” that’s how it felt for me. I felt like I literally learned a lot about just the basics of making a sinema that did really help me later on being on bigger sets
You’ve spoken previously about living with an eating disorder in your twenties. Did you seek treatment? Is it something you’re still dealing with?
With something like anorexia, it doesn’t go away. There is no kind of treatment that’s going to get rid of this body dysmorphia and hatred towards your body. Have I healed to the point that my body functions better than when I was severely underweight? Yes. But do I still to this day obsess over what I’m eating and how much I’m exercising and constantly being worried about me looking fat, and literally thinking that every single thing in my life is going to go away if I am fat, and that’s the only reason that I have anything in my life? It never truly goes away. There will never be a day that I don’t have some kind of weird relationship to food.
I ask because, for your role in Euphoria, I’m wondering if you tapped into that experience. Obviously, eating disorders aren’t the same as addiction, but can be a lot of crossover—shame, secrecy, control. Did that help you relate to Faye?
I definitely felt like part of me having an eating disorder was almost an addiction. And the sad thing is that when you have an eating disorder and you lose a ton of weight and you’re severely underweight, every single person and their mother is going to tell you: “Oh my God, you look amazing!” And it’s like: “I am literally dying to keep myself at this weight.” For example, during one part of my eating disorder, I would walk for five hours every single day straight. I pushed myself to do that every single day. And I feel like, in a way, Faye is trying so hard to get out of the drug world that I think she’ll desperately do anything that she can find, even if it might not be the best decision for her. She’s willing to put up with anything and just do anything that she can just to not be trapped in this anymore.
Saint Laurent look; Jenny Bird earrings.
Lian Benoit
What parts of yourself do you see in Faye?
How quickly she manages to fall in love with Wayne. It starts with just an idea of her and Rue being like: “Maybe we can get those keys off his belt.” But evvel Faye actually starts talking to Wayne, I think she really does fall in love with him. That’s something that I have also experienced in my personal life—I guess you could call it a hopeless romantic or somebody who just … I don’t know, there’s just been so many times in my life where I also have felt myself falling into a relationship way quicker than I should.
On Euphoria, you sinema more with Zendaya than the other actors. Have you learned anything from her?
This sounds really simple, but what I learned from her is that when you’re filming, literally just relax. Don’t be sitting there obsessing over what your hair looks like. Just relax and just do the scene and just listen to the director. And trust me, it’ll turn out good. Zendaya was very good at teaching people to just take a deep breath and just act like there’s not even a camera there.
During this season of Euphoria, some people have been questioning its portrayal of women. We’ve seen OnlyFans storylines, strippers, sugar babies. What do you think it’s trying to say about young women at this moment?
In my opinion, I think Sam [Levinson] is using these young women as a vessel to show how society currently sees them. I don’t believe that he’s trying to say that it’s their fault that all the world wants from them is for them to just be hot and be sexy and be young. I think Sam’s trying to say: “Look where we have got to in society.” The show is asking what it actually means to be a “slut” anymore — that’s a word that we’ve used to insult women for so many years. If a guy says: “I fucked cilt different girls this week,” everyone’s like: “You’re a baller. You’re awesome!” But if a girl goes: “I fucked deri different guys this week” Everyone’s like: “Oh, that’s so sad. Oh, you poor young girl. Why is it that when a young woman is sexual, or okay with being sexual in any capacity, it’s so sad and so horrible? It goes to show how shitty we are toward young women.
Arakii biker jacket; N21 dress; Jenny Bird earrings.
Lian Benoit
OnlyFans has become so normalized in our culture. As someone who evvel had a presence on the platform, do you think its popularity stems from societal attitude shifts, or something more basic like the economy offering so little to young women in particular?
I think the biggest part of it is the economy going to the absolute dogs. Something that I always want to talk about is whenever you see these articles come out that are like: “Oh my God, so-and-so made 20 million in a month on OnlyFans.” They’re all fake articles! They’re all just OnlyFans ads in themselves. The sad reality is that there’s young women out there who are beautiful that have no family support at all. There’s nobody that they can turn to and they literally have to keep going out and making money in order to hisse their rent and continue living paycheck to paycheck. So I think that a lot of this stuff is just capitalism. I definitely would say that the amount of people that are on OnlyFans today is 100 million percent a sign of the economy.
I notice, from watching and reading other interviews you’ve done, you seemed much more positive about your time making porn and doing OnlyFans a few years ago. But lately it seems like your tone has shifted. Why do you think that might be?
At that time, I was more so talking about what was called the “mainstream porn industry,” which was when you have a whole set of people, there’s a camera guy and a director and someone holding a boom mic and somebody doing the lighting. I was coming from that industry, but I have genuinely no idea what’s going on with the industry today. I still speak positively of the other fellow sex workers I worked with in the porn industry at that time. I will always speak positively about them. Nobody chose to be born and we definitely didn’t choose to have to work for the rest of our lives in order to survive. So, whatever job you do, it’s all about just what kind of day you can get through. And for me, at the time, it just happened to have been porn was the job that I could get through the day.
It seems like one of the central questions of season three is asking is whether sex work such as OnlyFans can be empowering?
Well, is it empowering to make $50,000 in a week? Yes, that is extremely empowering. But I guess it’s just the fact that that’s not realistic at all. The thing that I think is just such a misconception about OnlyFans is that every person is just making so much money. But I guess at the same time, I can see someone like Cassie who’s been so ostracized for just having the body that she has. Something that I’ve noticed is that women that just happen to be born with huge breasts, like Sydney Sweeney, always tend to be sexualized whether they want to or not, just because of the way that their body just naturally is.
I read that your beauty icon is the Bratz doll. Please tell me more.
When I was a child, my mother hated Bratz dolls. It was the early 2000s and she would go on and on and on about them. “Oh, these Bratz dolls, I can’t believe they would dress them like that and sell them to kids. They look like prostitutes!” I had this neighbor growing up who was five years older than me and she would give me her old Bratz dolls. And my mom would be like: “No, you cannot have these!” She’d take them all and she’d throw them in the trash. That’s the thing about raising kids: they’re like a bar of soap. If you hold them too tight, they’ll slip out of your hands. My mother was trying to raise me to be so against women that look like that, then I grew up to become that exact thing.
Roksolana turtleneck bodysuit and maxi skirt.
Lian Benoit
How did your mother react when you started doing porn?
When I first started, she wasunhappy. She would say sex work is the “lowest thing a person could do.” And I would always think: I think there’s some stuff that goes a bit lower than just porn. But eventually, she would come out to LA and meet my friends and be like: “Yeah, we’re just people. We’re just random girls that just do this for a living.” And that by the time I was probably 21, she really educated herself on the industry and learned a ton about it. She researched it more and learned about how she should be way more on my side.
What’s your relationship like with her today?
We’re so close and we talk every single day. When I was a teenager, in my late teens and early twenties, we had a lot of issues, but now that I’m almost 29, we have a really good relationship. But I just think that that’s the beauty of life is that your relationship with people can change and it can heal again and you can be good again. That’s what I love about getting older.
Would you come back for a fourth season of Euphoria?
I’m being honest, it’d be pretty hard to say no to, because those are my people. We’ve known each other since 2019. It’s been seven years. We all know each other. We all like working together. We’re all on the same page. I love working for Sam Levinson so much. I know that a lot of people don’t, but I like him a lot. I would do it forever.
What are your ambitions for the future?
There are so many directors that I want to work for and so many directors that I want to work for again. I really want to work with Adam Sandler again. I really want to do all sorts of comedy stuff. I really want to work with so, so, so many amazing directors and I want to do so many things.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Attico trench coat; Roksolana turtleneck bodysuit
Lian Benoit
Photographer: Lian Benoit @lianbenoit
Stylist: Jack O’Neill @jxneill
Hair: Takuya @tak8133
Makeup: Aya Tariq @ayatariqmua
Manicure: Jazz Style @jazzstyle
Set Design: Linnea Crabtree @lilne
On Set Producer: Jean Jarvis / Area1202 @area1202
