ALEXA DEMIE from Waves

There’s a carnival scene in HBO’s Euphoria – Sam Levinson’s drug-soaked teenage drama – where actress Alexa Demie is spinning in a hall of mirrors, high on MDMA. ‘I’m looking at a thousand versions of myself,’ says Maddy, Demie’s darkly commanding character. Her confidante, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), turns to her and says, ‘We should just pick the hottest, most confident, bad b*tch version of ourselves and be that for the rest of the school year.’ Pick a bad b*tch she did: a demigod of suburbia, who’s since launched fan Tumblrs and a thousand memes. As for Demie’s own teenage years, ‘I was always hustling,’ says the entrepreneurial Los Angeles native, 24, who spent high school designing sunglasses and assisting on the set of Nicki Minaj music videos. The actor goes back to school this month for the film Waves, director Trey Edward Shults’ drama about two teenage couples, played by Demie and Kelvin Harrison Jr and real-life sweethearts Lucas Hedges and Taylor Russell.