Alexa Demie, Euphoria’s Most Elusive ‘It’ Girl, Is Finally Ready to Talk

If you are wondering why this even needs to be said of a 35-year-old actress coming off the final season of TV’s buzziest show and the most high-profile gig of her career, then you have clearly not been paying attention to the more Euphoria-obsessed corners of the internet.

Since the start of this third season, a theory has circulated that Demie intends to stop acting entirely after the series wraps. The source, it turns out, was an unknown keyboard warrior who recirculated, without context, a 2020 episode of The A24 Podcast on which Demie complained to The Curse star Nathan Fielder about a period early in her career when it felt like all the good parts were going to white girls; she questioned whether there was space for Latina actresses in Hollywood, and whether she wanted to keep putting up with auditioning at all. Unbeknownst to Demie, who says she assiduously avoids her own headlines, rumors of her imminent industry exit started to gain traction. When I ask her about it, her first instinct is to mess with the fans who have expressed potential heartbreak. “Should we just ride with it?” she suggests with a grin.

She then elaborates a bit on that erstwhile discontent. During her early 20s, she says, years before she got the role on Euphoria, she was in a casting office just up the street from where we’re sitting now, at Max & Helen’s diner, in the Larchmont neighborhood of Los Angeles. She read the character description for a lead role that had a paragraph-length list of acceptable ethnicities — all Hispanic backgrounds were omitted. “I was reading it, and it really hit me — and I kept having that experience,” says Demie, who is half white but connects strongly with the Mexican side of her heritage. “I was sick of going into those rooms, and this was during that time when you’re young and every few months you’re just like, ‘I’m quitting, I’m quitting.’ But knowing me, I never would have quit. I’m more of the energy of like, ‘No, I’m going to show you I can do it.’”

The whispers of retirement are no doubt abetted by the unorthodox career moves that have made Demie Hollywood’s most elusive “It” girl. Though she has been a breakout star of Euphoria since its premiere in 2019 — thanks largely to the bad bitch energy she brings to the role of Maddy Perez — she’s done few interviews, and most were during season one, when she was contractually obligated. In fact, when she appeared on the red carpet of HBO’s long-awaited season three premiere, it was the first time most fans had seen her in years, largely due to a self-imposed exile.

Euphoria creator Sam Levinson says, “There’s an air of mystery to her, and you never feel like she’s playing a game with it. It’s just natural, and she also has a great sense of humor about it.” The pop star Rosalía, a close friend and season three co-star, says Demie has a unique kind of purity: “She has the cleanest, brightest aura in all of Hollywood.” (And to ensure it stays pristine, the actress brought her own energy healer to her THR cover shoot, who was on hand to cleanse the space before her video interview.)

Demie traces her insider’s outsider relationship with the industry to growing up just on its periphery. Raised in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, she thought of Hollywood itself as elusive. “I saw the sign right there,” she gestures north from our booth at the diner. “And I knew that was the place where shit went down, and it felt close, but nobody in my family had any idea about it.”

She was raised by her mother, a makeup artist for MAC Cosmetics stores who would occasionally use Demie as a subject for her master classes. She went to John Marshall High School in Los Feliz, where she was in drama and dance, but says nobody ever discussed the industry or what a real career in Hollywood might look like. She did, she says, always have a drive for money and the freedom it could offer, and was always hustling. She worked as a receptionist at her aunt’s dental practice when she was 12, wearing a headset (which she loved) and filing paperwork (which she hated). After high school, she spent two weeks in New York visiting colleges — “I had the best two weeks of my life, but I realized, ‘I’m going to party too much in New York, so I need to stay [in L.A.].’”

Around 2015, after a few years of working odd jobs — at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and American Apparel, a stint as a stylist’s assistant and a sunglasses designer — a friend asked her to be in his short film. After its release, he told her that people were asking about “the girl in the movie” and that she should really think about a career as an actress. “He was like, ‘There are people in the business who want to meet you,’” she remembers. “Something started spinning and I was like, ‘Maybe there’s something here.’” She started reading books about the craft and watching vintage YouTube videos of Marlon Brando with his acting coach. She can’t remember how she got her first manager — “She actually just messaged me a month ago, to say congrats on everything” — but does know that she paid for her to take a lesson with acting guru Lesly Kahn, who coached Demie for her first potential movie role. “It was a biopic about Griselda Blanco, and I was going to play a younger Griselda, but it wound up falling apart,” she says.