A group of comedians ripped into Sydney Sweeney, perhaps oblivious to the fact that MAGA’s new sex icon was herself watching their performances from the venue’s VIP seats.
“[That show where] her t—ies are always out,” as comic Erik Griffin described HBO’s nudity-ridden hit Euphoria, which garnered Sweeney two Emmy nods for her portrayal of lead character Cassie Howard. “She’s at the pharmacy and her t—ies are out—it’s wild,” Griffin said. “For no reason.”
It’s not clear whether Griffin knew Sweeney, along with her fiancé Scooter Braun, was in the crowd while delivering his set at The Laugh Factory in Los Angeles, but he was not the only comic finding a laugh at her expense.
Headline act Matt Rife ribbed the couple over their age gap. Braun, 44, is 16 years older than 28-year-old Sweeney.
But many members of the audience did realize she was there, with The Hollywood Reporter noting that several people looked around as these jokes were delivered to gauge her reaction.
Sweeney reportedly took the jibes in stride, doubling over with laughter at the mention of her sex scenes. Griffin also made it clear he didn’t have much of an issue with her going full-frontal in the hit HBO show, though he did complain about her male co-stars enjoying the same on-screen treatment. “There’s too much d–k,” he quipped. “That wasn’t in the trailer.”
Nor do the jokes appear to have dented her confidence in the slightest. The day after attending Griffin and Rife’s show in Los Angeles, she put in an appearance at Variety’s “Power of Women” event wearing a sheer dress that revealed her breasts. “I hope I can inspire other women to be confident and flaunt what they’ve got, because you shouldn’t have to apologize or hide in any room,” she told the magazine.
While the actress’s 2019 breakthrough in Euphoria may have helped establish her as a sex icon, it was her starring role in an advertising campaign for American Eagle Jeans this year that catapulted her to a newfound status as a pinup girl for the far-right.
The “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” ad drew fire for what critics saw as evoking eugenics motifs, with the equivalence of “jeans” and “genes” in a riff on Sweeney’s pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes taken as a clear play on historic ideals of racial superiority.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,” Sweeney said in one of the ads. “My jeans are blue.”
As one user wrote on X, “The most Nazi part of the Sydney Sweeney ad for me was the use of the word offspring.”
Supporters of the campaign framed it as merely a tongue-in-cheek critique of “woke advertising,” with one person writing on social media. “If you think a jeans ad with a pun about Sydney Sweeney being pretty is a Nazi dog whistle, you genuinely need to put the phone down for a while.”
Right-wing Fox News in particular had a field day with the controversy, mentioning the campaign no less than 181 times in just the four days after it first aired. Top-ranking MAGA figures also weighed in to defend Sweeney from the perceived left-wing backlash. “Cancel culture run amok,” as White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung described it. “This warped, moronic, and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024. They’re tired of this bulls–-t.”
“My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi,” Vice President JD Vance said in a subsequent podcast appearance. “Wow. Now the crazy Left has come out against beautiful women,” Texas Senator and diehard MAGA loyalist Ted Cruz wrote in an X post. “I’m sure that will poll well…”
Sweeney herself has since remained notably schtum on the topic of her political leanings. But it wasn’t the first time the actress had been accused of right-wing sympathies. Photos captured at a party she threw to celebrate her mother’s 60th in 2022 showed guests wearing “Blue Lives Matter” t-shirts and MAGA-style red hats.
While she may have later slammed critics for turning that “innocent celebration” into “an absurd political statement, which was not the intention,” further imploring the public to “stop making assumptions” about her personal politics, internet sleuths have since tracked down what appear to be her voter-registration records in Florida.
Republican, since at least June 2024.
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