‘Tis the season of Sydney Sweeney. It just now comes with an asterisk.
The two-time Emmy nominated actress, producer, Ford aficionado and booked-and-busy brand partner is revving up for the busiest run of a still rising career. On the heels of a meaty role opposite Oscar winner Julianne Moore in the Apple TV+ movie Echo Valley, Sweeney has two films in theaters on back-to-back weekends in August: Tony Tost’s Americana followed a week later by Ron Howard’s period thriller Eden opposite Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby and Daniel Brühl.
September delivers an anticipated Toronto International Film Festival world premiere for a big swing as a queer boxer in David Michod’s biopic Christy, which she also produced, followed by Paul Feig’s psychological thriller The Housemaid opposite Amanda Seyfried. Early footage of the latter film electrified CinemaCon audiences when it debuted in Las Vegas in April. Oh, and the final season of Euphoria, the show that made Sweeney a star, is on the horizon for early 2026.
Who could have guessed that a seemingly harmless denim campaign would force a footnote on what could have been a glorious few months because of how it stirred up a surprise culture war that stretched from TikTok to the White House, with everyone from Lizzo to Donald Trump weighing in with an opinion. But that’s what happened after American Eagle dropped its “Sydney Has Great Jeans” campaign July 23. It was designed as an ambitious partnership that included print ads, 3D billboards (including one on the Sphere in Las Vegas), Snapchat lens technology that allowed users to interact with a digital Sweeney, and a limited run of the “Sydney Jean” with 100 percent of the net proceeds donated to a nonprofit of the star’s choice.
Within days, a handful of TikTok users took offense to a campaign clip that features Sweeney saying (with unique inflection), “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.” The users claimed it promoted eugenics or was a form of Nazi propaganda because Sweeney is white, blond-haired and blue-eyed. While countless users dismissed the theories as nonsense, the dog pile had begun causing the hot takes to go viral. Mainstream media outlets picked up on the swirl and the coverage helped spread the controversy far and wide, from from late night to the White House. President Donald Trump clocked in after The Guardian reported that Sweeney registered as a Republican in Florida prior to the 2024 election.
“Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are ‘flying off the shelves.’ Go get ‘em Sydney!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “The tide has seriously turned — Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be.” His post came hot on the heels of American Eagle defending its campaign while pushing back on the narrative that there was any other message to the pun. “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans is and always was about the jeans,” the brand shared on Instagram on Aug. 1.
Sweeney stayed silent. She still hasn’t said a word about the campaign or its backlash but she did return to Instagram on Wednesday to promote Americana with a carousel of artistic behind-the-scenes images for her 25.3 million followers. “A few years ago I filmed this little movie with some friends and now you get to meet Penny Jo,” posted Sweeney, seen in many of the images that also feature Paul Walter Hauser and pop star turned actress Halsey. It’s the only recent promotion for the film that Sweeney has done aside from hitting the red carpet for a premiere at L.A. venue Desert 5 Spot on Aug. 3. But that night, she only posed for photos before quickly ducking inside without speaking to reporters.
It begs a question: What should Sweeney do now?
Not much says Nathan Miller, CEO and founder of full-service strategic and crisis communications firm Miller Ink, which represents Fortune 500 companies and celebrities. “American Eagle played it reasonably well,” he explained, adding that the brand’s response reflects the current culture. “The same brand five years ago would’ve apologized profusely and tried to move past it quickly. Instead, they stuck to their guns and stood by the campaign. It was irreverent enough without being offensive. What was great about it for Sweeney is that while it may have had everyone talking, she wasn’t. Everyone was speaking about her, and she doesn’t have to do anything.”
But with a busy fall up ahead, she surely will have to speak at some point about her new films even if the first time she does field questions from the press is during a TIFF press conference. Asked how she should respond to the reveal about her voting record as a Republican, Miller said, again, she doesn’t need to engage. “If it is authentic to her and she wants to be public about it, great, but she should not feel compelled to do so just because someone dug up her party registration. It’s totally appropriate for her to say, ‘I don’t discuss my politics, that’s personal. I’m only here to talk about my movie.’ And she doesn’t lose. That’s the safest strategy,” he noted, adding that on the flip side it is possible today to build a brand as a political celebrity as there have been plenty of examples on the left. Reaching across the aisle today only helps to widen one’s appeal, Miller said.
Lucy Robertson, head of brand marketing at Buttermilk, an agency that specializes in creator marketing, said the American Eagle campaign felt like a “misstep” for Sweeney because rather than leveraging her as a creative partner who helped shape the narrative. “It uses her as a convenient ‘hook’ to hang the campaign on, in this case, with a tone-deaf ‘good genes’ message that quietly reinforces Eurocentric beauty ideals like white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes.”
Robertson said that “real influence” in today’s market comes from being “embedded in the creative ecosystem for the long-term” rather than just doing one-off endorsement deals. Sweeney has a long history of brand deals after having partnered with Laneige, Miu Miu, Armani Beauty, Kérastase, Heydude, Dr. Squatch and Baskin-Robbins.
“Zendaya’s partnership with On, for example, sets the benchmark. In that 14-month collaboration — set to be the first chapter of a multi-year partnership — she hasn’t just starred in ads — she’s co-designed the Cloudzone Moon sneaker, helped craft the visual story in the evocative ‘Be Every You’ campaign, and shaped how her identity and movement translate into both product and storytelling,” Robertson explained of Sweeney’s Euphoria co-star. “That level of integration deepens cultural currency where we’ve seen Sydney front multiple brand campaigns in a short space of time, the result can feel more transactional than transformative.”
A well-placed legal source familiar with negotiating A-list brand deals says it may be too soon to tell whether the social media swirl will affect Sweeney’s future partnerships and acting gigs. Companies might prefer not to work with her if they believe consumers have Sweeney fatigue or if her exposure could tarnish their image. (Amid the American Eagle backlash, Baskin-Robbins disabled comments on its TikTok videos featuring Sweeney.) The expert notes their advice to clients varies based on star wattage and that there’s a science to measuring celebrity. At a certain level of fame, too many product endorsements could dull one’s A-list image, the source added, while others turn to international markets to keep cash flow coming in while avoiding being “everywhere” on their home turf. Meanwhile, brand deals are becoming a necessity for middle-of-the-road actors who are feeling the squeeze of studio consolidation with fewer available gigs.
Matt Herbert, co-founder and co-CEO of brand tracking platform Tracksuit, tells The Hollywood Reporter that the reaction to AE’s campaign “doesn’t need to necessarily define AE, but it is about how they react from here on.” He cites Pepsi’s controversial 2017 ad with Kendall Jenner that some called tone-deaf for using strikingly similar themes to Black Lives Matter protests. (The company later pulled the commercial online.)
Tracksuit also found that brand awareness for another one of Sweeney’s brand partnerships for Dr. Squatch saw that company boosted by three percentage points from August 2024 to July 2025. (Recall that the men’s soap brand sold bars made with her actual bathwater due to popular demand.) The company also notes that “trendy” is a common theme associated with Laneige, Dr. Squatch and Miu Miu among survey respondents already familiar with all three brands. As for AE’s bottom line, the company’s next earnings report is Sept. 4, which could offer insight to how much of an impact, positive or negative, the controversy had on sales.
Herbert notes that AE was “facing pretty big challenges over the past 18 months,” with brand awareness down by 6 percentage points from January 2024 to June 2025; and consideration, preference and usage declined by 5 percentage points. … any celebrity [endorsement or] brand activation is an attempt to drive relevance, which we know from looking at all of our tracking data.”
In the case of AE, “the news is so fresh, the conversation is so fresh, and we’ll be keeping an eye [on the outcome of the campaign in] the coming months,” says Herbert. That could mean even more eyes on Sweeney and her upcoming projects, which in Hollywood is always a good thing.
Sweeney in American Eagle’s fall 2025 campaign.
Courtesy of American Eagle