Euphoria star Barbie Ferreira knows what it’s like to feel invisible.
Just like her character Kat Hernandez, Barbie felt like the “fat sidekick” within her own group of friends.
In an interview with Teen Vogue, she recalled,
“A lot of fat girls are sidekicks. For example, when I was seven, I was my childhood best friend’s fat sidekick, and she was the main character of the movie of life.”
She continued,
“Growing up, you watch people who look like you or people who are different from the main character. You think, ‘I can never be the center of attention. I can only live vicariously through them.’ Euphoria took that trope and turned it upside down. Kat’s a fat girl who takes command of her own life and takes command of how people look at her. You don’t really see that on TV.”
But it was a while before Barbie, like Kat, took command of her life. She recalls feeling invisible in high school “to the point where people from my own high school would ask me what school I went to.”
She even tried to hide herself, tried to take up less space. She said,
“I completely isolated myself from people because I felt like they didn’t see me the way that I saw myself.”
Luckily, Barbie eventually found people who realized just how amazing she is.
“Thanks to finding community outside of my immediate surroundings, particularly on the internet, I have a career. If I had believed what people around me thought, I’d be invisible.”
In addition to Euphoria, Barbie recently starred in the 2020 film Unpregnant. She also landed the Fall 2020 H&M campaign as well as their March 2021 campaign for their collaboration with designer Simone Rocha.
Euphoria season 2 is set to premiere on January 9, 2022 on HBO.
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