Barbie Ferreira is no stranger to dark subject matter (Euphoria, anyone?). But now, she’s stepping into her horror era — and it feels eerily well-timed.

In Faces of Death, in theaters nationwide on April 10, Ferreira plays Margot, a content moderator for a major video platform tasked with reviewing the internet’s most graphic videos. It’s a premise that sounds extreme until you consider how much of that content already exists at our fingertips. The film, which leans into the 1978 original’s infamous “Is it real or not?” conceit, taps into a larger cultural shift: the growing blur between what’s real, what’s staged and what we’ve simply learned to scroll past.

Ferreira doesn’t see the idea as far-fetched. If anything, she thinks the culture has already caught up.

“I grew up on the internet. I like to call myself a guinea pig of my generation,” she tells Yahoo. “I’m a very old Gen Z — you could even call me a cusp millennial — so I was really part of the first batch of children who had access to it.”

That outlook comes with a kind of double vision, one in which the shock factor that once defined online culture has slowly worn off. “It was a very different world back then, and I can’t tell if it’s better or worse — I actually can’t,” she says. “What used to feel shocking is now so normalized.”

The role arrives at a moment of transition for Ferreira, who was catapulted into the spotlight when Euphoria premiered in 2019. She broke out as Kat Hernandez, a fan-favorite character whose arc explored identity, confidence and internet infamy in real time.

Now, a few years removed from the show — which she exited after its second season in 2023 — Ferreira is moving into a different phase. The projects are darker, the choices more deliberate, and her relationship with visibility, especially online, is shifting too.

“There’s this feeling that we’re all under surveillance,” she says. “When actors are a little too personal and people know you too much, it’s hard to suspend disbelief.”

Ahead, Ferreira opens up about unwinding with Nickelodeon, navigating fame in the internet age and what it’s like to watch Euphoria from the outside — just like the rest of us.

You’re playing someone who has to watch disturbing content for a living. What was the hardest part of stepping into that headspace?

During the filming of it, I really wanted to be in more of a darker headspace. [Ferreira’s character] Margot not only had this incredible trauma that was very viral and very public, but also her job involves her watching kind of the worst of the worst on the internet at all times in rapid succession — almost like you’re going through TikTok.

I just thought about how incredibly affecting that can be. So what I did was I listened to a lot of really dark material. I was listening to Hunting Warhead, which is a podcast about taking down a huge child abuse ring on the black market. It was just very, very dark — extremely dark true crime about the internet and how pervasive that can be.

I’d watch old internet videos of accidents and really horrifying things that I typically wouldn’t be watching at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday. But because I’m an actor and that’s what I love to do, I was really going through all of that.

What did you do to unwind and shake that off at the end of the day?

After the movie, I had to do the exact opposite. I came back to L.A. and I only had a little bit of time before my next movie, so I watched a lot of SpongeBob, That’s So Raven — everything that could possibly make me feel the exact opposite.

I would honestly fall asleep to Hotel Transylvania every night just to clear my head of the disturbing parts of filming a horror movie. Because even though it’s fake, your body doesn’t really register that when you’re covered in blood. So it was a lot of children’s television to decompress.

While we’re on the subject of boundary-pushing content, Euphoria was so shocking when it first came out. Season 3 is about to premiere. Do you think it still hits the same way now?

I think when it first came out, I really remember how shocked people were that there was this level of sex and violence and abuse being portrayed. I haven’t watched Season 1 in so long because it is very effective — it hurts me to watch at times. But I’m sure it’ll still find ways to rustle feathers like it always has.

Are you going to be watching this season?

Oh, I’ll definitely be watching. I’m curious because I have no idea what’s going on.

Even when I see the girls out and about, I don’t think they know what’s going on either. They kept it very secretive from the scripts, so I’m really curious to see what’s going to happen.

You also get to follow the characters years later, so I’m really interested. It’s going to be fun.

Faces of Death taps into something really unsettling — the idea that we don’t know what’s real online anymore. Did it change the way you personally think about what you consume or even what you share?

What I really loved about the script was that even in 2023, when we shot this, it was so relevant — and it’s only grown in relevance since then.

It feels like every year we’re desensitized to more and more real-life violence that we’re constantly being shown and that’s being pumped into us.

A 5-year-old could see a video of someone being murdered on their iPad, and it’s something they’re used to.

So for me, it really aligned with the movie. It’s more of a question than a message. How do we participate in all of this?

What’s your relationship with social media right now? Has it shifted as your career — and your visibility — has grown?

As soon as I started acting professionally and really dedicated my life to it, I took a step back from the internet. I feel like when actors are a little too personal and you know them too much, it’s kind of hard to suspend disbelief.

But I also think a lot of actors are trying to figure out their own way because this is completely new — not just for actors, but for everyone.

There’s this feeling that we’re all under surveillance at all times.

Actors have never had this kind of access to every single opinion of them anonymously like [they do] now. Imagine if Joan Crawford had an Instagram Live?

It’s a completely new landscape to navigate, and I don’t think there’s a concrete answer yet. I don’t even know if there ever will be. But yeah, it’s pretty hard to be a public figure in the age of the internet. At the same time, I think everyone feels that way now — we’re all in it together.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.