Sydney Sweeney: ‘I’m very proud of my work on Euphoria – but no one talks about it because I got n@ked’
The 24-year-old star of ‘The White Lotus’ and ‘Euphoria’ speaks to Ellie Harrison about the stigma around stripping off on TV, playing a mean girl and her rocky path into acting
Last summer, Sydney Sweeney was dubbed the scariest girl on TV by The New York Times. Not for playing a violent killer or a sadistic villain, but something far scarier: a Nietzsche-reading, pool-lounging rich kid who can destroy your self-worth with just one withering look. “I love it,” she says of the dubious honour. “It’s definitely not a title I thought I would ever receive, but I’ll take it.”
The rich kid in question is Olivia Mossbacher, one of an ensemble of marvellously monstrous characters in The White Lotus. HBO’s biting wealth satire, set in an all-inclusive Hawaiian holiday resort, became a hit for its superb skewering of privilege and performative wokeness. Olivia was a college student dragged along on the trip by her wealthy parents, who spends her days sunbathing with her friend Paula, savagely judging fellow guests in between chapters of philosophical texts. Like the sharks that lurk in the nearby waters, this terrible twosome can smell their next victim a mile off. And they’ll tear them apart with glee.
Sweeney herself is nowhere near as terrifying. Down the phone from Los Angeles, the 24-year-old is energetic and giddy. Words gush out of her: gossip, opinions, anecdotes. Ask her about her dog, Tank – “he’s in the backyard staring at squirrels” – and she’ll practically combust with joy. She’s frightened of Olivia, too. “I’ve not been around many Olivias but I’ve had brief encounters with some and they’ve scared me.”
You’ll have seen Sweeney before The White Lotus, usually playing characters who feign toughness but who are actually deeply insecure. There was child bride Eden in The Handmaid’s Tale; the intense, suicidal teenager Alice in Sharp Objects; and, in teen drama Euphoria, the sensitive high-schooler Cassie, who flirtatiously removes her knickers one minute, disintegrates with anxiety in the bathroom the next. She is particularly proud of that performance – not that the critics took much notice.
“With The White Lotus, I felt like people were finally recognising the hard work I’ve been doing,” she says. “This is something that has bothered me for a while. I’m very proud of my work in Euphoria. I thought it was a great performance. But no one talks about it because I got n@ked. I do The White Lotus and all of a sudden critics are paying attention. People are loving me. They’re going, ‘Oh my God, what’s she doing next?’ I was like, ‘Did you not see that in Euphoria? Did you not see that in The Handmaid’s Tale?’”
