Over the past year, Sydney Sweeney has starred in two movies and a TV show, and filmed season three of one of the buzziest TV shows of the decade. But it’s her personal life that’s become something of a national obsession. In May, she confirmed she had ended her engagement with her fiancé, Jonathan Davino; around the same time, she released a controversial, limited-edition batch of soaps allegedly made up of her bathwater in collaboration with the men’s brand Dr. Squatch; then, in August, she starred in an ad campaign for American Eagle ad which ignited a national debate.
In the wake of the discourse, the 28-year-old did not address the backlash directly. Instead, social media commentators led the charge—including President Donald Trump. On August 4, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Sweeney had “the hottest ad out there,” and then went on to declare that “being WOKE is for losers,” among other strange claims.
Now, in an interview for GQ’s Men of the Year issue, Sweeney has finally addressed the reactions to the ad, as well as her thoughts on the president’s statement. “It was surreal,” Sweeney said when asked about Trump’s post.
As for the backlash itself, Sweeney said, “I did a jean ad. I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise, but I love jeans. All I wear are jeans. I’m literally in jeans and a T-shirt every day of my life.”
She went on to say that she wasn’t paying much attention to the discourse at its height because she was working such long hours filming Euphoria. “I wasn’t thinking of it like that, of any of it,” she explained. “I kind of just put my phone away. I was filming every day. I’m filming Euphoria, so I’m working 16-hour days and I don’t really bring my phone on set, so I work and then I go home and I go to sleep. So I didn’t really see a lot of it.”
As a refresher, in the ad, Sweeney referenced Brooke Shields’s controversial 1980 Calvin Klein jeans ad with a monologue about genes. The campaign tag line for Sweeney’s American Eagle collaboration was “My jeans are blue.” On social media, some claimed that Sweeney, who has stayed mum on her political affiliations for her entire career but is rumored to be a registered Republican, was signaling a belief in the superiority of her genes, specifically blue eyes. The reaction, and then the reaction to the reaction, quickly snowballed on social media and beyond, becoming something of a litmus test for one’s progressive or conservative bonafides.
