Sydney Sweeney reveals her favorite meme from Season 2. “Euphoria” is the one from Cassie’s bathroom meltdown scene in episode three. “I would have to say it’s the ‘I’ve never ever been happier’ meme. I love that meme,”She told Variety on Saturday at the Canneseries TV festival, being held on France’s Côte d’Azur.
Asked what part of Cassie’s personality or backstory she would like to see explored in the next season of the show, she mentions a trait that was exposed in episode four of Season 2. “There was a bit of Cassie that I got to play with when she started saying that she’s crazier than Maddy in a scene with Nate. And she kind of got a little more evil and dark and serious, and not so frantic. I would love to play with more of that streak within herself.”
Also, she enjoys playing dark parts? “I like playing characters that are complex and have multiple layers,”She says. “And people wonder if they’re evil or good, and pure or not. I like playing characters that make people think and make me think.”
These are some of the reviews for “Euphoria”And “The White Lotus” suggest that her characters — Cassie and Olivia, respectively — are dangerous or scary. Are they as dangerous or scary as she imagined them to be when she first took on the roles? “No, I didn’t. Olivia, a little bit. I knew she was a little scary, just because of how she thought, her thought process. It did scare me. But Cassie, especially in the beginning, I never thought of her as scary. I just think of her as a really fragile, damaged girl.”
Some journalists who have written about Sweeney suggested that her characters might be in “Euphoria”And “The White Lotus”Represent her generation in a certain way. Is she happy with this or does she see it as valid? “I get where they’re coming from. But at the same time, I think there’s so much more to the generation than just like one or two characters. I think that there’s so much more than Cassie or Olivia.”
Sweeney has attracted intense media attention, particularly in recent months. Some of the coverage seems a mixture of her personality and that of her characters. “Euphoria”And “The White Lotus.”How does she handle that? “You can’t really because there’s always going to be multiple narratives. And I can’t control the narratives,”Sweeney: “I can’t control what you write, and I can’t control how people perceive it. And so I just know my own story and other people get to hear it or listen. That’s life. How it is now.”
The end of a season in a series is like “Euphoria”Mixed emotions can bring out the actor. “It is very bittersweet, because everyone has worked so hard in creating this project, and so are really happy that it’s done, and people are going to get to see it soon. But then, you’re also sad because it is a family. And you don’t want to say goodbye. And it’s a long journey. And you miss everybody.”
Sydney Sweeney at the Canneseries TV festival on Friday
Olivier Vigerie/Canneseries
Sweeney has the freedom to choose from the many roles available to her, given the momentum in her career. How does she choose her role? “I like to try and find characters that are challenging for me in multiple different ways, and are completely different from one another. I want to continue to shock people with the characters that I play when they don’t expect that I would choose that next.”
One of her roles is in “Madame Web,” a comic-book tentpole set in Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters. Is she actually reading the comic books on which the movie is set? “I am. I’ve been ordering a bunch of comic books,”She says. “There’s a lot to learn. I’ve always been a really big fan of all of the Marvel and Sony Universe movies. I’ve grown up watching them all and I’ve been engulfed in the entire world my entire life, so being able to be a part of that is such an incredible, incredible thing.”
Sweeney is also set to star in Tony Tost’s film “National Anthem,”Penny Jo Poplin “She’s a small town girl who dreams of being like her idol Dolly Parton and running away to Nashville and being a country singer,”She explains. “And she doesn’t know how she’s going to do it. But she meets a fellow cowboy who is going to help chase her dreams.”
Neben her acting career, she also has a successful producer career. Fifty-Fifty Films is her production company. She currently produces nine projects. She says that four of them have been approved for greenlight. One of them is “The Players Table,”The rights to the book were sold to HBO Max. Annabelle Attanasio was appointed as the lead author.
“We are in the process of writing the episodes. So it’s quite a long process. Everything that you see, before anyone ever gets cast in a project, is years and years of work. It’s years of packaging a project. It’s years of developing a pitch. It’s years of convincing people that they should believe in you, put money into your show or movie, and then you have to develop the entire series. And so we’ve been writing multiple episodes right now,”She says.
What makes her want to produce? “I’ve always loved building my characters. And I love doing more than just one thing. I’ve always wanted to try as many possibilities as I possibly could,”She says. “And I realized that I could build entire worlds in movies and TV shows. And I love reading books and bringing them to life. I wanted to bring my voice to all of these stories that I saw in my brain.”
She claims she is “excited”Please share information about the other projects that her company has sold. “I have not talked about them yet,”She says. Wann will she share? “I don’t know yet. I don’t know. It’s hard, because I feel like people are used to actors talking about projects that are already getting made or making them next month,”She says. “And so they’re not used to the years of work it takes to put into a project. So I’m kind of a little timid about announcing anything until it’s right before we’re going to start filming.”
Sweeney confirms a surprising fact before she wraps up the interview. She trained as an MMA fighter. [mixed martial arts]As a teenager, she was a fighter.
“It is correct. I started training when I was about 13. I would do competitions and fight. And I really enjoyed it… I was in first place. And I fought a guy,”She says.
She hasn’t employed this skill in her acting career… so far. “I would love to. It might be something that I’m producing…”She says it with a wry smile