As I’ve said before, I like Sydney Sweeney. I think she’s a smart cookie, and I appreciate the fact that she’s not a nepo-baby, and that she’s gotten to the top because of her sheer hustle, drive, talent and work ethic. Sydney is featured on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood Issue cover, and VF did individual profiles of all of their cover stars. She’s now an in-demand producer because of the success of Anyone But You, plus Immaculate. She’s also got Ron Howard’s Eden coming up, and Echo Valley with Julianne Moore. Some highlights from her VF profile:
On her interviews: “We’re going to have a conversation, we’ll talk for 30 minutes, it’s condensed, then people don’t understand the context behind the conversation, and it’s all clickbait. Unfortunately I don’t get to control my image—my image is in your guys’ hands.”
Her work as a producer: “I love being able to have a seat at the table, have creative say over decisions that would help benefit the project, whether it be the character or budget or time frame, anything that I can do that can help the project succeed. I love to help brainstorm and problem solve because it’s a puzzle—you’re constantly trying to have all these moving pieces put together.
On the strategy to play up affair rumors with Glen Powell: “Once [Anyone But You] did become a success, a lot of the interviews were just questions about it, so I don’t know if we necessarily were planning on ever talking about the strategy behind any of it. We just had very specific questions and when you say no to a question, people think that you’re a bitch, so….We definitely are very supportive of each other’s careers. We watch and talk about each other’s projects all the time, or even if we’re both debating between projects, we’ll call each other up and ask for advice. I just saw him last week and we were talking through some projects, so we definitely have a really great working relationship. We would absolutely love to work on something else together.
On a female producer publicly calling her talentless: “It’s very disheartening to see women tear other women down, especially when women who are successful in other avenues of their industry see younger talent working really hard—hoping to achieve whatever dreams that they may have—and then trying to bash and discredit any work that they’ve done. This entire industry, all people say is “Women empowering other women.” None of it’s happening. All of it is fake and a front for all the other sh-t that they say behind everyone’s back.”
More on women not supporting women: “I mean, there’s so many studies and different opinions on the reasoning behind it. I’ve read that our entire lives, we were raised—and it’s a generational problem—to believe only one woman can be at the top.
There’s one woman who can get the man. There’s one woman who can be, I don’t know, anything. So then all the others feel like they have to fight each other or take that one woman down instead of being like, Let’s all lift each other up. I’m still trying to figure it out. I’m just trying my best over here. Why am I getting attacked?
She also talks about Euphoria and effortlessly walks the line of being happy about a show which made her a breakout star AND calling out the producers for not having their acts together. Which is true. As for what she says about what Hollywood is really like and all of the “women supporting women” stuff being bullsh-t… I believe it, but I also believe it’s particular to Sydney too. Like, I think there are pockets of Hollywood where, um, white women support other white women. But I think a lot of women are probably threatened by Sydney’s youth and beauty too.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.