Topline
Sydney Sweeney is refusing to take questions about her controversial American Eagle marketing campaign at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, where her buzzy new movie “Christy” is set to premiere ahead of awards season.
Sweeney told Vanity Fair on Thursday she would refuse to take any questions from journalists about her denim ad: “I am there to support my movie and the people involved in making it, and I’m not there to talk about jeans.”
Sweeney’s new movie, "Christy," a biographical film in which she plays boxer Christy Martin, is due to premiere at Toronto on Friday.
Sweeney has had a highly active few months amid the storm of controversy over her American Eagle ad, as two movies—“Americana” and “Eden”—opened in theaters this summer, though neither were hits at the box office.
Since the ad went viral in July, she has consistently refused to talk about it—she hasn’t addressed the ad on her social media profiles, and she declined to comment on the ad in a profile in the Wall Street Journal in August.
American Eagle defended its campaign with Sweeny on Wednesday and boasted an “uptick in customer awareness, engagement and comparable sales” thanks to the Sweeney ad. The company reported Q2 revenue of $1.28 billion, beating estimates, and chief marketing officer Craig Brommers said on an earnings call the Sweeney ad is “not going anywhere.” “Sydney will be part of our team as we get into the back half of the year, and we’ll be introducing new elements of the campaign as we continue forward,” Brommers said. The company’s earnings report and defense of Sweeney caused shares to spike Thursday, jumping nearly 35% in one day.
In “Christy,” Sweeney plays Christy Martin, a former professional boxer. The film follows her rise to success during the late 1980s and 1990s, as well as her attempted murder by her husband, who was 25 years her senior, in 2010. A summary on the Toronto Film Festival website says the movie features a “career-best performance from Sydney Sweeney,” calling it “devastating and triumphant” and a “fierce tale of self-actualization in the face of terrifying adversity.” Sweeney has said she gained 30 pounds for the role and spent months training, suffering multiple concussions. “Every single fight you see, we are actually punching each other. We are going full force,” Sweeney told Vanity Fair. The movie was directed by Australian director David Michôd, and it co-stars Ben Foster as Martin’s husband. The film does not yet have a distributor or a U.S. release date. The Hollywood Reporter said “Christy” should “draw major attention from distributors eyeing both prestige awards slots and mainstream audiences,” and some awards pundits have suggested Sweeney could be in awards contention for her performance.
Sweeney’s American Eagle ad sparked a high-profile culture war controversy this summer because of a voiceover the actress performs during a commercial. Sweeney makes a play on words with “genes” and “jeans,” stating her jeans are blue as a message—“Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”—appears on screen. Critics accused the ad of coming close to promoting eugenics, while a host of right-wing politicians, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, defended the actress. Trump called it the “HOTTEST ad out there” in a Truth Social post, causing American Eagle’s stock to soar. Though Sweeney has never addressed the backlash, American Eagle defended her shortly after the controversy broke out, stating the marketing campaign “is and always was about the jeans” and “great jeans look good on everyone.”
American Eagle Shares Surge 30% After Sydney Sweeney Ad (Forbes)