Key Takeaways:
For Doniella Davy, Euphoria, the popular show starring Zendaya and Jacob Elordi, was never about glitter for glitter’s sake. It was about refusing to let television make makeup small. “I had always thought that TV makeup was incredibly boring,” Davy said to BeautyMatter. When she was brought in to interview for the pilot of Euphoria, she assumed she would be asked to keep things subtle, safe, serviceable. Instead, series creator Sam Levinson told her he wanted makeup to function as “this really expressive kind of emotional storytelling tool,” and that she didn’t need to “keep it regular TV makeup.”
For a working makeup artist who had built her early career on realism, most notably on Academy Award Best Picture winner Moonlight, it was a creative detonation. “If you think of that film and what the actor’s faces look like in that film, that was really more my specialty,” she explained. “I was mostly very into realistic makeup, wounds even.”
The shift toward makeup embellishments had first surfaced in Under the Silver Lake, an indie project that allowed her to flex a part of her creativity that had been largely dormant. “That was my first film that I got out of just the makeup on screen not looking like makeup. There was a lot of color, glitter, [and] even rhinestone tears,” she said. That experiment became the precursor to Euphoria. And what followed would permanently alter the beauty industry’s relationship with television.
If Euphoria established Davy’s visual authority, Half Magic Beauty formalized it, though not by design. “I didn’t,” she said, when asked when she realized the show’s aesthetic could translate into a standalone brand. “I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was just doing my art, my service, my job. And then the opportunity came to me, and I said, ‘ok!’” The brand was not conceived as a merchandising extension but as an organic response to demand.
Crucially, she was deliberate about not positioning Half Magic as a franchise offshoot. “We intentionally didn’t launch the brand as a Euphoria brand. We didn’t say Euphoria in our branding at all, or use cast members in our campaigns,” she explained. “Half Magic is born from the DNA of Euphoria makeup, but it’s an evolution of the conversation.” That evolution hinges on accessibility. “It’s about making makeup artistry easy and fun for anyone at any skill level. It’s about wearing glitter or color anywhere, anytime, not just within the context of Euphoria.”
Retail strategy followed the same instinct-led clarity. “Our initial retail partner was Ulta Beauty because they reached out to my Half Magic team before we even launched and offered us a spot with them,” Davy said. “That’s the kind of passion and confidence I want in a retail partner. I’m not trying to plead my case. You either get the brand and know your consumer will love it or you don’t.” While the company is now expanding globally, Davy defines success less by footprint and more by connection.
Makeup as Narrative Infrastructure
Davy, who has been with Euphoria since the pilot (now more than seven years), described the show as both a dream job and a technical boot camp. “I learned early on the show that the lighting was really moody and quite shadowy sometimes, which kind of made it hard to see all of the makeup looks that my team and I were designing,” she said. Rather than scale back, she escalated. “My solution was brighter colors, more reflective elements in the makeup. [For example], instead of a dark-green liner, we did brighter green, and maybe put shimmers on top of it so it really shows more,” she continued.
The now-iconic rhinestones, hypersaturated liners, and crystalline tears were not simply aesthetic indulgences; they were intentional decisions shaped by cinematography. “Because the lighting is so moody sometimes, we wanted the makeup looks to not become muddy and shadowy. We want them to show.”
It is this level of technical consideration that distinguishes Davy’s work from the wave of social media imitations it inspired. On TikTok, Euphoria makeup became a global phenomenon. Tutorials, recreations, and brand tie-ins proliferated. So far, it has garnered up to 606,000 posts on Instagram and 202,500 on TikTok. Davy watches it closely. “Of course,” she said, “I love to get in there and comment and blow up people’s comments.” But behind the viral sparkle lies rigorous world-building.
For Davy, makeup on Euphoria is not a trend engine, but character psychology rendered visible. “When you’re watching TV, you’re looking at the person’s face,” she said. “Makeup can be this whole extra layer of information for the audience.” Every look begins with context, costumes, set design, bedrooms, etcetera. “I look at the girls’ bedrooms,” she said, “and think, what color bedspread do they have? Decorative pillows? Fairy lights? What’s the mood? I pull a lot of emotional backstory stuff from that.”
Then come the technical variables: camera angles, lenses, and light direction. “Where’s the lighting coming from? Is it coming from above, and is it going to give everyone really moody raccoon eyes? Or is it coming from the side, and it’s going to create uneven lighting all over the face?” she explained.
This is why Davy’s makeup works and why it resonates with everyone, especially teens. It isn’t applied in isolation in a trailer and sent to set unchanged. It is always evolving. “We’re constantly in there adjusting things,” Davy said. Costume swaps happen last minute. Scenes shift from night to morning. On Euphoria, creativity is fluid, mirroring Levinson’s directing style. “He’s intuitive rather than formulaic. And I’m like that [kind of] artist,” said Davy. The result is a show where makeup feels alive, reactive, emotional, and imperfect, much like humans.
Season 3: A Deliberate Rejection
As beauty culture swung toward minimalism and the so-called “clean girl” aesthetic, Davy remained openly skeptical. “I’ve always hated it,” she said of the term. “It’s problematic in some ways, and it’s not a makeup trend.” The makeup of Season 3 of Euphoria, premiering April 12, 2026, on HBO, arrives as a counterpoint. “The whole season, the makeup is definitely a campaign against the clean girl aesthetic that’s sort of taken over,” Davy said. “It’s full glam. It’s more glam than previous seasons.”
This time, she noted, the experimentation is less neon and more polished but no less maximal. “It’s head-to-toe glam—big eye makeup and a strong lip and body makeup. It’s pretty full-frontal maximalist glam,” she said. Davy also described it as a take on traditional Hollywood makeup, but through her aesthetic and through her eyes—pretty sparkly and pretty out there in the beauty space.
Importantly, she did not design Season 3 as a reaction to trend cycles. “I didn’t care if ‘clean girl’ was going to go on for another 10 years,” she said. “I don’t follow trends like that. I creatively do what I want to do for the show and what works for the show.” That independence may be precisely why the timing feels prescient. As maximalism regains cultural traction, Euphoria returns as a frontier rather than a footnote.
For all the artistry, Davy is quick to ground the conversation in reality. Television is not a vanity project; it is a job. “I just have to remember my boss is the director. I’m here to serve their vision,” she said, of the job, which is predictably physically demanding—12- to 14-hour days, 4:00 a.m. call times, overnight shoots. “Sometimes we are doing the makeup at 4:00 a.m. and you do not feel like being there,” she said.
It is an ecosystem built on collaboration and speed. “You have to be able to work extremely fast and you have to have really good skills,” she added. “It’s really all down to the skill.” When hiring, she is blunt: “I need you to be really good at makeup and really fast at it and a team player.” Networking anxiety, she argued, is secondary. “As long as you’re not an insane person, your work is going to get you hired. It is your work.”
Beauty as Cultural Permission
Beyond production logistics, Davy sees makeup in entertainment as culturally consequential. “I think it’s so integral to pop culture and entertainment,” she said. “If you imagine people without hair and makeup and styling, they’re just going to look like regular people.” When nonconventional looks are worn confidently on-screen or on the red carpet, they ripple outward. “Others will follow and they’ll say, ‘She’s wearing black lipstick, I want to try it.’”
For Davy, encouraging that experimentation matters. “I’m all about regular people going against the grain of what they think they should wear on their faces and being experimental and letting their moods drive the story,” she said. In that sense, Euphoria is not just a television show. It is a case study in how entertainment can destabilize beauty orthodoxy.
And as Season 3 lands maximally, unapologetically, and technically dialed-in, Davy remained less interested in virality than in refinement. “You’re your own coach,” she said. “This was good, but how can we make it even better?” With Euphoria preparing to reenter the cultural conversation, Davy’s influence feels less like a trend cycle and more like a recalibration. In her hands, makeup is neither excess nor embellishment, but a narrative, a rebellion, a discipline, and a service all at once.