Support truly
independent journalism
Our mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.
Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.
Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.
Louise Thomas
Editor
Hunter Schafer has revealed why she and her co-star on Euphoria, Dominic Fike, broke up.
The 25-year-old spoke candidly about her relationship with Fike, who she split from in 2023, on Wednesday’s episode of Alex Cooper’sCall Her Daddy podcast. During the conversation, Cooper first addressed Fike’s 2023 comments to Apple Music host Zane Lowe about the breakup, as the singer said he struggled with codependency in relationships. However, in response, Schafer revealed that she and her ex “mutually agreed” to split up, which she said was difficult to do.
“It’s one of the cleaner breakups I’ve had. We both recognized that this is not working, and we can’t do this. We got to go our own separate ways,” she explained. “It was so, so hard because we really loved each other. He’s a really special person and I love his soul and everything.”
Although the Cuckoo star confessed that the breakup was “messy” at one point, it was still a “clean parting,” claiming that both she and Fike “had a lot to work on.”
“I think that’s also why I’m in this era of, I gotta figure my s*** out,” she continued. “We had a really good thing. But there were things in our own selves that had nothing to do with each other that kept coming up in the way of the relationship.”
Later in the conversation, Schafer opened up about navigating the public relationship with Fike, noting that it was her first monogamous relationship, and her first time dating a cis-gender man. She said the relationship “wasn’t perfect,” and claimed that another reason it ended was due to infidelity.
“Part of why the relationship ended is because I got cheated on for the first time,” she said. “It’s part of my truth, but that fundamentally changed me as a person. And this whole process of realizing that cheating has nothing to do with you.”
Schafer then recalled how she questioned and blamed herself after the “3 Nights” singer allegedly cheated on her.
“As a trans woman, also with a man who has never dated that [type of person] before,” she explained. “Because of the way I’ve been socialized as a trans woman, it’s been this crux in my life of what life has been so hard sometimes, I was like, ‘Oh, god is this it? Can I just not?’”
When Cooper asked how she found out about the cheating, Schafer expressed that “she kind of knew,” which prompted her to search through her then-boyfriend’s phone. “I’m not proud of that,” she confessed.
She then acknowledged that while she has “no interest” in letting the public know what happened in her relationship, she still wanted to “talk about [her] truth.”
The Independent has contacted a representative for Fike and Schafer for comment.
The former couple first met while filming season two of the HBO teen drama series Euphoria, which premiered in January 2022. Schafer was cast in the first season of Euphoria as Jules Vaughn, while Fike was introduced in the second season as a new character named Elliot. The two confirmed their romance when they walked the red carpet together at the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty.
Fike first confirmed their breakup in July 2023, when he confessed in an interview that in his experience, love can sometimes be misconstrued as needing someone. “That has actually bled into my romantic relationships, that kind of dynamic,” he told Lowe at the time. “And it is often the cause of the end of my relationship. I’m just done being in relationships right now.”
Elsewhere in the conversation with Cooper, the Kinds of Kindness star confirmed that she’s currently single and is enjoying that now, as she’s been focused on her career. She also opened up about relationships in the future, explaining that while she’s dated musicians previously, she’s not sure if she’ll do it again.
“They have to go off for however many months [on] tour and then I’m working. It’s very hard,” she said. “I don’t know if that is, like, in my path again, because I’ve done it and I’ve tried it and really tried to make it work. It’s just very hard. At least at this point in my life, I don’t have the capacity to, like, figure out how that works. Maybe someday, though. We’ll see.”