Terrified of Gen Z? Sydney Sweeney and HBO can take some credit for that
By Jessica M Goldstein
As Olivia on “The White Lotus”, Sydney Sweeney narrows her blue-as-Barbicide eyes over a copy of “The Portable Nietzsche” to toss off a vicious, vocal-fried observation that will shatter a grown man’s confidence while sending a tremor of terror through anyone older than 30 watching at home.
As Cassie on “Euphoria”, the same eyes go Bambi-wide in love, hope and panic; rather than fear her, viewers fear for her, a naive romantic melting down as the guy she’s secretly having sex with studiously ignores her, lest his volatile ex (who is also Cassie’s best friend) discover their tryst.
Cassie is the girl even bad boys dream about. Olivia is the stuff of most parents’ nightmares. It is very funny and a little odd to think of Sweeney, the 24-year-old responsible for both characters, as being either one.
It’s cliched to compliment an actor by saying they’re nothing like the characters they play. But Sweeney, who comes across as practical, level-headed and extremely self-aware, seems almost parodically distant from the roles that made her famous, two unstable young women with no idea who they really are, one of whom she doesn’t even like.
When she watched herself as Olivia in “The White Lotus”, Sweeney says: “I was like: ’I cannot stand this girl. If I ever ran into her, I’d be so scared.”
People have asked Sweeney if they think Cassie and Olivia would be friends. To which she replies: “You really think Olivia would be friends with anybody?”
“The White Lotus” is a classic Mike White creation, a biting, uneasy satire about rich people in paradise who keep finding ways to be miserable on a luxury holiday.
Meanwhile, “Euphoria” is chaotic, hedonistic swirl of sex, glitter and fentanyl.
The series premiered in mid-2019, right around when TikTok exploded, and seems designed with that app’s frenetic, remixed consumption in mind.
Though she’s sometimes on screen for only minutes of the hour-long episodes, Sweeney’s a breakout star online, her darkly comic big swings as meme-able as they come: waking up at 4am to have a manic episode via elaborate skin care routine; drunkenly wailing along to Sinead O’Connor while using a bottle as a microphone; projectile-vomiting into a hot tub; scream-crying in the girls’ bathroom that she has “never, EVER been happier”.
“I don’t even get my generation,” Sweeney says, yet she has become something of an avatar for Gen Z, encapsulating adults’ twin concerns about teens today: that they are either like Olivia – manipulative and ruthless, or Cassie – so hungry for approval that they make themselves easy prey. In portraying both, Sweeney has found herself at the centre of two charged cultural conversations around the depiction of young women on television.
Sweeney has been aimed arrow-straight at the career she has since she was a tween in Spokane, Washington, and an independent movie was being shot in her state.
She persuaded her parents to let her audition by putting together a presentation on a five-year business plan of what would happen if she got the role: an agent in Seattle, commercials for a reel, travel to Los Angeles, then booking a TV show during pilot season.
What followed, Sweeney says, was seven years of auditioning and landing nearly nothing. She struggled to assimilate at her high school in Burbank.
She regularly missed class for auditions (though graduated valedictorian), and she says her 1990 Volvo that “leaked oil everywhere” was formally exiled from the gated student parking lot to make space for her classmates’ nicer cars. “It's just a very unhealthy environment to grow up in.”
In time, Sweeney started stringing together meatier parts. She played a devout, doomed young bride on The Handmaid’s Tale, a psychiatric patient on Sharp Objects, a passionate drama kid on Everything Sucks!
Finally came the audition notice that would change everything, for a new series that promised to tell the unfiltered truth about growing up with anxiety and addiction: Euphoria.
Though most young people would probably die at the thought of even watching Euphoria with their parents (and vice versa, no doubt), Sweeney asked her mom to read with her so she could submit a tape.
She requested more scripts and a call with creator-writer-director Sam Levinson, who told her more about Cassie’s journey.
“I knew I could bring way more to Cassie than what is just written,” says Sweeney, who takes her character development seriously, writing entire books for every character she plays, tracking their lives from birth to the present day.
While the behaviour of Cassie and Olivia can be terrifying for different reasons, Olivia’s malice and Cassie’s desperation play very differently on screen, in large part because of how often Cassie is shown in compromising positions without clothes.
The graphic scenes in “Euphoria”, particularly those featuring Sweeney, have prompted some criticism among viewers who question exactly how much and how often skin must be shown in service of Cassie’s story.
But Sweeney says she finds the show’s nudity “empowering”.
She was made to feel so self-conscious about her body in high school, where she was regularly dress-coded for wearing the same clothes as her peers with smaller chests, she says.
Now, she says: “I actually feel more powerful with my body. I feel more confident. I feel more free.”
She reiterates that she has never felt “pressured” to do anything explicit on Euphoria and that Levinson recently added clothing to a nude scene per her request. “I said: ’Sam, I don’t think that she needs to be naked in the scene and I don’t feel comfortable doing it.
“Everyone’s just going to look at my boobs and not actually take the scene seriously for the content that's happening.’ He was like: ’Okay, yeah. You don’t have to do that.’… I appreciate people being worried… but I’m totally fine on ’Euphoria’.”
Sweeney’s “Euphoria” character is ending the season with her secret exposed, her life and sanity apparently coming undone. In real life, all of Sweeney’s efforts seem to be coming together.
She’s busy with her own production company, Fifty-Fifty Films, and “Euphoria” has been renewed for a third season.
And she feels like her work is finally clicking with viewers, especially after “The White Lotus” debuted, which sent some “Euphoria” sceptics back to her work on that series.
“People are like: ’Oh, my God, where did she come from?” she says. But nobody asks her that anymore. “People are now taking my performance more seriously and giving me respect.”
She remembers travelling in Europe after “The White Lotus” aired and being recognised in public more and more. “For the first time I was getting followed into stores,” she said, but “people were scared to come up to me because they thought I was going to be mean like Olivia. I was like, ’That’s not me, don't worry.”"
The season 2 finale of “Euphoria” will stream on Showmax from Monday afternoon.