According to The Daily Mail, Carol Baum spoke to New York Times journalist Janet Maslin during a screening of the 1988 film “Dead Ringers” — which Baum produced early in her career — and went after Sydney Sweeney for no apparent reason. “There’s an actress that everybody loves now — Sydney Sweeney,” Baum said to Maslin. “I don’t get Sydney Sweeney. I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney’s movie because I wanted to watch it. I wanted to know who she is and why everybody’s talking about her.”
Apparently, Baum was specifically talking about Sweeney’s recent romantic comedy “Anyone But You,” which co-starred Glen Powell and became an immediate box office sensation upon its release. She also called the movie, which Sweeney produced, “unwatchable.”
“I said to my class, ‘Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty, she can’t act. Why is she so hot?'” Baum continued; the former executive teaches producing at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She then said that nobody in her class could answer except when one student asked a pertinent question — if Sweeney could help get a movie off the ground, then what’s the problem?
“I said, ‘Well, that’s a really good question … that’s a very hard question to answer because we all want to get the movie made and who walks away from a green light? Nobody I know,” Baum apparently conceded to the student. ‘”Your job is to get the movie made.'”