Why everyone is still so obsessed with Sydney Sweeney

Is the actress really having the worst week ever? Why does everyone care?

When regular people talk about a celebrity having “literally the worst week ever,” it’s never actually the worst week a person could ever have. What they mean is that a famous person is dealing with famous-people problems that regular people never deal with, combined with attention that civilians will never endure.

That in mind: For a celebrity, Sydney Sweeney is having literally the worst week ever.

Sweeney, the star of HBO’s Euphoria and The White Lotus and the big screen rom-com Anyone But You, bombed at the box office; her new movie Christy, a middling biopic about boxer Christy Martin, barely made $1 million in its opening weekend. That’s awful. For some perspective, the 2020 re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas (a movie that was about as old as Sydney Sweeney at the time) made $1.3 million when Disney brought it back to theaters — about the same money that Sweeney’s movie made.

Rubbing salt in the wound, on social media a journalist posted a query they received from Sweeney and the movie’s PR team, urging them to change the narrative of a box office bomb because the movie has a high “popcornmeter rating” (an audience feature on Rotten Tomatoes).

Sweeney’s box office bust coincided with an evasive GQ interview about her infamous American Eagle jeans ad from earlier this year. The ad featured wordplay, smirking at the idea that Sweeney has good genes while also possessing good jeans. Sweeney’s ad and the backlash it spurred got so much attention that President Donald Trump weighed in, praising the ad and Sweeney. Asked if she understood the optics of a white person with blonde hair and blue eyes implying genetic superiority, Sweeney gave a non-answer: “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.”

Celebrities and concerned members of the public have been calling out Sweeney’s interview for its lack of clarity and its implications, mainly that Sweeney seems to be winking and nodding at, if not cosigning, racist ideas and white supremacy.

On top of this, there are reports this week that Zendaya, arguably the most famous celebrity in Sweeney’s proximity, is refusing to do press with Sweeney to promote their show Euphoria because of Sweeney’s politics.

Together, it’s all being billed as the worst seven days in Sydney Sweeney’s existence. But it’s hard to really believe this is the worst week of Sydney Sweeney’s life — mainly because we’re still talking about her. It’d be worse for Sweeney, or any famous person, to fade away into obscurity.

That’s easier said than done, because Sydney Sweeney, and the team behind Sydney Sweeney, has put in so much work to make sure that never happens. It’s perhaps her most valuable skill as an actress, maybe even more valuable than her acting.