Sydney Sweeney Ends Silence On American Eagle Jeans Controversy

Sydney Sweeney, one of the biggest rising stars in Hollywood right now, has finally openly talked about the controversy she found herself in the middle of at the end of July 2025. Sweeny’s American Eagle Jeans ad quickly ignited backlash, with critics seeing the “genes/jeans” wordplay as having eugenic undertones and promoting racialized beauty standards.

In a new interview with GQ, Sweeney is asked if she was surprised by the reaction, and she responds by suggesting it was just a job for her, advertising an article of clothing she lives and dies by: “I did a jean ad. I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise, but I love jeans. All I wear are jeans. I’m literally in jeans and a T-shirt every day of my life.“

“Is there something that you want to say about the ad itself? The criticism of the content was basically that, maybe specifically in this political climate, white people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority,” says GQ‘s Katherine Stoeffel. Sweeny replied: “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.“

They also talked about Sweeny “keeping [her] thoughts and [her] life separate from that work,“ allowing the Euphoria star to emphasize why she doesn’t jump to publicly defend herself in such a scenario, being confident in who she is privately:

I mean, I’ll vent to my girlfriends. But other than that, no. I know who I am. I know what I value. I know that I’m a kind person. I know that I love a lot, and I know that I’m just excited to see what happens next. And so I don’t really let other people define who I am.

Regarding President Donald Trump’s reaction to the ad and backlash, Sweeney says: “It was surreal.” GQ also suggested that it would feel good to have “somebody [having her] back in public, and conveniently some very powerful people,” asking if Sweeney felt that way, and she responded:

I don’t think…. It’s not that I didn’t have that feeling, but I wasn’t thinking of it like that, of any of it. I kind of just put my phone away. I was filming every day. I’m filming Euphoria, so I’m working 16-hour days and I don’t really bring my phone on set, so I work and then I go home and I go to sleep. So I didn’t really see a lot of it.

GQ also addressed the impact that the controversy had on American Eagle’s business and asked how Sweeney felt about this. Check out the comments below:

GQ: By some reports, American Eagle’s stock price went up 38 percent. Does that make it less painful to be at the center of that much conversation, if you know that it really worked for the business that you’re partnering with?

Sydney Sweeney: I was aware of the numbers as it was going. So when I saw all the headlines of in-store visits were down a certain percentage, none of it was true. It was all made up, but nobody could say anything because [the company was] in their quiet period. So it was all just a lot of talk. And because I knew at the end of the day what that ad was for, and it was great jeans, it didn’t affect me one way or the other.

Sweeney is coming off multiple major projects, including last year’s hit Anyone But You with Glen Powell. This summer, her movies Americana and Eden were both finally released theatrically, and both proved to be divisive. She is now gearing up for the wide release of the sports biopic Christy, based on the life of boxer Christy Martin, which is unlikely to make the list of 2026 Oscar nominees.

But Sweeney also has the highly anticipated thriller The Housemaid coming up, featuring her starring alongside Amanda Seyfried. She is certainly one of the biggest young stars in the industry, with her contemporaries including Mikey Madison, Zendaya, Austin Butler, and more. She has several more forthcoming projects to prove that studios are eager to work with her.

Between movies getting mixed reviews and controversy outside her film career, Sweeney has faced a few road bumps. Her response to the American Eagle ad controversy is in the interest of her own career and may not be the answer that people wanted. But the name Sydney Sweeney still has a lot of star power in Hollywood, and additional publicity could actually help her reach new heights.