Hunter Schafer says she had bottom surgery in December, news almost no one outside her family and closest friends knew until she shared it in Elle’s November cover story, published online October 19, 2026.
“I just had bottom surgery in December, which was amazing, and I love it so much,” Schafer said. Page Six places the operation in December 2025.
Elle writer Lotte Jeffs frames it as something no one outside Schafer’s immediate circle of family and friends knew yet. Schafer said she had “embraced the gender-expansive part” of herself and “really wanted to try to make that previous body work,” describing her gender as “flatter” now.
“I’m a woman. I’m a girl,” she said.
The recovery was slow. Elle puts it “at the start of this year,” with a limit of “150 steps per day, which is nothing.”
The conversation happened earlier, in late summer in London, on a bench in Grosvenor Square, while Schafer was in town for a friend’s wedding. Jeffs suggests the friend was likely Zendaya, the Euphoria co-star Schafer calls “like a sister,” who married Tom Holland in the British countryside in August.
Schafer is 27, and her first TV lead, playing Cora in the Prime Video series Blade Runner 2099 arriving in November, is the hook for the Elle piece.