Euphoria is known for many things: its raw, unadulterated look at American adolescence, its next-level music score, and of course, its makeup. The Euphoria makeup looks from Season 1 took over the internet in 2019, and helped launch the HBO show into stardom. Whether it was glitter tears, colorful eye shadow, or winged liner for days, the sparkly looks from Euphoria were all thanks to the show’s head makeup artist and Half Magic Beauty founder, Donni Davy. “The makeup is successful in the show because it goes with what the characters are going through,” Davy says in an exclusive interview with Her Campus. “So that’s my great challenge, and collaboration with the cast and with [show creator] Sam Levinson, to really push the story forward through the makeup.”
In Season 2, as the Euphoria narratives got darker and characters more reserved, Davy adapted the makeup accordingly with less color and more subdued looks (at least, compared to Euphoria Season 1 standards). Now, with Season 3 premiering on HBO on April 12, Levinson leads the characters into a glamorous world outside high school and past college. “It’s the most glam season yet. But it’s not fun, experimental glam. It’s very serious, feral glam,” Davy says. “Very tight-lined eyes, piercing eyes, frosty eyelids, high-contrast lip liner, frosty lips” — a departure from the playful looks of the first two seasons.
“It’s funny, I don’t know what the characters did during college,” Davy says of the show’s time jump. “I have no idea what that looked like, or what they went through, because Sam didn’t write that into Season 3. I don’t know what these characters have been through, so I’m just picking up with them currently.”
So, what does that mean for the fan-favorite characters? Fan-favorite Maddy (Alexa Demie) is “in her fearless business b*tch era.” Maddy’s makeup inspiration for Season 3 are “more Hollywood traditional this season, a little bit Sophia Loren vibes.” But Maddy’s still sticking to her tried-and-true references, ones that Davy says Demie brought in herself, “like Cher and even a little bit Cleopatra.” Maddy’s looks this season are “very fierce, serious, but a little cheeky in how much of a strong eye and lip there are. It’s kind of scary. That makeup is meant to be a little scary.”
Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), on the other hand, “is living this suburban life, but then that all changes, and her glam kind of gets way amped up and way feral,” which may be through her move into online adult content. “This season is like a movement against clean girl. I always say, the clean girl aesthetic is a great makeup base,” Davy says. Though, “you see a little bit more of that clean girl sensibility” in Cassie in the beginning of Season 3, “because she’s very much online, you’re kind of seeing that, and then you see that change.”
For Jules (Hunter Schafer), “Her glam is a lot more melancholy. It’s more for the male gaze, but it’s also kind of distressed, not colorful, not playful,” Davy says. “Her color palettes are a lot more dark, like black, so the makeup reflects that moodiness.” We get hints of this kind of look in Season 2, but it’s a far cry from the bubbly, colorful Jules looks we got in Season 1.
Collaboration with the cast is a key part of Davy’s work, but it differs every day, and depends on the actor she’s working with. She points to Demie as someone she collaborates with the most. “She comes in with a really strong idea of what she wants, and then we tailor it and make it really sing on camera,” while “Hunter and Sydney very much let me just go and do my thing.” Davy says, “However collaborative anyone wants to be, I’m down. I love the collaborative process. I think it makes for really great results, especially when you get everybody’s buy-in and everyone’s excited about it.”
The Half Magic x Euphoria Collection
Davy’s been no stranger to using her Half Magic Beauty products on the Euphoria set. But now, Davy has created her own Euphoria collection for the brand that both she and fans of the show can use to create their own looks. “All these products I created, my entire Half Magic makeup line, I created for using on Euphoria, but also for using on all my other projects, clients. So really it’s my dream makeup. And I love color and sparkle, so it’s a lot of that,” Davy says.
The collection — which will be sold at Ulta Beauty stores beginning April 29 — includes a brand new eyeshadow palette and lip gloss, plus new limited-edition shades of Glitterpuck (“This is all over Season 3,” Davy says), Glitterpill, face gems, and more. The packaging for the collection comes from film stills from the show, decorated with moments from the scripts and Davy’s own annotations. She describes the innovative packaging as “very much a creative process, behind-the-scenes artifact… with Easter eggs all over it. The hardcore fans will know every little thing. They’ll clock it all.”
The collection includes the Euphoria Eyeshadow Palette — Half Magic’s first full fixed palette — with colors inspired by the leading ladies of the show. “I wanted to capture each essence of the character in my version, what I really think of them. So it’s not necessarily the color they wear the most, but it’s the color I think really represents them,” Davy says. “These are really sparkly colors. They can be quite sheer or you can make them quite opaque. You want to use your finger to put them on,” and you can combine colors to create an “iridescent rainbow out of all of them.”
But Davy is aware that not all Euphoria fans are looking to dive into maximalist looks, and she kept this in mind while creating the collection. “I want to make sure there’s an entry point for every kind of makeup style person to come in and be like, ‘Oh yeah, just a little shimmer, maybe two different colors at once,’ but just pat on a little bit.” The collection is made to be buildable. “You can do the wing, the rhinestones, you can add the works and end up looking like Maddy or Jules Season 1, or you can be more chill about it and just dip into the essence and power color of each character.”
For college students specifically, though, Davy has some glam recommendations. “I think the girls need to show up in fierce glam and have a really strong presence as humans in the room, and makeup can help so much with that,” she says. “College students should be leaning a little into grunge, a little indie sleaze. Those are the years. Scare the boys.”