Sydney Sweeney has sparked a discussion online after opening up about having to “fight” for roles in Hollywood.
Right now, Sydney is promoting her new movie, Reality, which is based on the true story of Reality Winner — the former US intelligence specialist who, in 2018, was given the longest prison sentence ever imposed after she leaked government secrets to the media.
Sydney’s portrayal of Winner marks a stark contrast to the role she is perhaps best known for: Cassie Howard on HBO’s Euphoria.
Among the show’s lineup of troubled teens, Cassie is one of Euphoria’s more delusional characters — particularly in Season 2, where we see her have a complete mental breakdown over her secret affair with her best friend’s ex.
And while the highschool drama certainly helped put Sydney on the map, she recently admitted that finding mainstream success as the boy-obsessed Cassie actually made it more difficult for her to land roles going forward.
If you’ve followed Sydney, you’ll probably know that in 2021, she starred in the first season of The White Lotus as the character Olivia. However, she recently told Variety that bagging the role was no mean feat.
“They didn’t think that I was right for White Lotus, because I did Euphoria,” she told the outlet.
Being that the casting directors didn’t initially approach her for the part, Sydney confessed that she put herself on tape and “auditioned for White Lotus just like everybody else and had a call back like everybody else.”
“I could get offered roles that are similar to the ones that I’ve played,” she said, “but the ones that are different, the ones that surprise people that I do, are the ones that I usually have to fight for.”
With this in mind, it came as no surprise to hear that the 25-year-old “had to audition” for the part of Reality Winner, emphasizing again: “I had to audition for it. I had to put myself on tape and send in my audition just like everybody else.”
“There’s always people who see me as Cassie or see me as Olivia,” she said, opening up about the struggles of being typecast. “They send me scripts that are just like that. It’s the ones I have to fight for that usually are the ones that I want that are different, like Reality.”
It’s fair to say that Sydney does raise a valid point about privilege and typecasting, and the way that big roles are distributed in the industry. However, fans online couldn’t help but see the funny side of her outlook.
“By ‘fight,’ she means ‘apply,’” one person wrote on Twitter in response to the Variety quotes, echoed by hundreds of others who made the same observation about Sydney’s take.
Despite this, a number of fans came to Sydney’s defense, noting that it makes a lot of sense that her role in Euphoria “completely warped casting directors’ perceptions of her abilities,” therefore making it harder to break out of that box.
y’all are misunderstanding what she’s saying. yes she had to “apply” to get a job like everybody else but euphoria had completely warped casting directors’ perceptions of her abilities so yes she had to fight to prove she can play more than cassie roles
On top of this, it’s obviously important to note that it’s extremely normal for established actors in Hollywood to be continually approached for big roles once they’ve made a name for themselves.
A great example of this is Timothée Chalamet, whose agent caused a stir online at the start of the year after revealing that the Oscar nominee “hasn’t auditioned” for a single part in over seven years.
That aside, it seems Sydney’s work in the audition room paid off, telling Variety that playing Winner in the new movie was “an exciting new experience” for her.
“We’re really just showing a moment in a woman’s life,” she told the outlet of the new film. “It’s truly just what happens, verbatim.”
You can read Sydney’s entire interview with Variety here.
