Sydney Sweeney has largely stayed quiet in the weeks following her appearance headlining a controversial new American Eagle campaign.
The Euphoria star was featured modeling AE’s denim in an ad that praised her “good jeans” but also made references to genetics, which led some to liken it to Nazi or white supremacist propaganda.
“‘Sydney Sweeney has great jeans’ is and always was about the jeans,” American Eagle said in a statement. “Her jeans. Her story. We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
Until today, Sweeney’s most recent Instagram post was made four weeks ago and consisted of her American Eagle spot. On Wednesday, she shared another post featuring photos of her time spent filming Americana, which debuts in select American theaters on Friday.
“A few years ago I filmed this little movie with some friends and now you get to meet penny jo ♥️,” Sweeney captioned the post.
‘Americana’ took a while to hit theaters
Filmed in 2022, the modern day Western crime drama first saw the light of day at the 2023 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival. In March 2024, Lionsgate acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film.
A trailer for Americana was released in May. In addition to Sweeney, the film also stars Paul Walter Hauser, Eric Dane, Halsey, Simon Rex and others.
Reviews have been mixed
Americana currently has a 77 Rotten Tomatoes score and a 5.4/10 on IMDB. Early reviews have included both positive and negative reactions.
“Turner Classic Movie-buffiness aside, Americana is a modern story, with a special resonance for our times,” writes Dominic Mah of The Nerds of Color. “Mainly in the sense that across our great land, things are not going well, yet people are trying to work it out. A simplified reading, to be sure, but in the climactic siege-gunfight, the echoes of American movie history and real history come spilling out in a way that reminds the viewer of the brutality with which the West was won, all stemming from humble folks, helpless before their big dreams of money, love, stardom, etc.”
Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post was less generous with his take, giving the movie one star out of four and ripping its “bottom of the barrel quality.”
“Sweeney plays Penny Jo, a shy South Dakota waitress who dreams of becoming a country singer but has a stammer,” Oleksinski writes.
“We are supposed to accept that the constantly photographed Sweeney is a wallflower nobody pays any attention to. The actress’ fake speech impediment, meanwhile, comes off both rehearsed and not nearly rehearsed enough.”
