Sydney Sweeney's grandparents had the wildest response to her bold ‘Euphoria’ scenes: "You've the best..."
Sydney Sweeney once opened up about how her family reacted to the nude scenes in HBO’s hit show ‘Euphoria’ that made many fans cringe—and the family’s reaction was anything but conventional. The 26-year-old actress said she invited her whole family to the show’s premiere, including her grandparents and uncle. Starry-eyed over the event, Sweeney said she hadn’t really thought about how graphic some of her scenes were. “For the premiere, I invited my entire family [...] like my grandparents, my uncle. I was like, ‘It’s the Hollywood premiere like you gotta come,” she said. Sweeney recalled how she was “so excited” that she “wasn’t thinking’ about the scenes. “And we were all sitting next to each other and giant screen, like ginormous screen. I was on the floor,” she added.
Sweeney recalls feeling a wave of embarrassment as her scenes played on the giant screen. But her grandparents surprised her instead, by not being uncomfortable or disapproving of her. “They said I have the best tits in Hollywood,” Sweeney revealed during an appearance on ‘The Ellen Show’. Her grandmother, who was in the audience during the interview, even gave a thumbs-up when Ellen DeGeneres joked, “Alright then, grandma approves.” The candid and supportive reaction from her family lightened the moment and left the audience laughing.
However, despite her family’s approval, Sweeney has received backlash and been trolled online for the nudity in the series. Some have even gone so far as to tag her family in screenshots of explicit scenes. Sweeney called it “completely disgusting and unfair” in an interview with GQ. “You have a character that goes through the scrutiny of being a sexualized person at school and then an audience that does the same thing,” Sweeney shared. In fact, the actress admitted she would “never” stop filming NSFW scenes. “People forget that I’m playing a character, they think, ‘Oh, she gets naked onscreen, she’s a sex symbol,’ ” Sweeney said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. She added, “And I can’t get past that. I have no problems with those scenes, and I won’t stop doing them, but I wish there was an easier way to have an open conversation about what we’re assuming about actors in the industry.”
Sweeney, however, feels proud of her decisions and thanks ‘Euphoria’ creator Sam Levinson for making her feel so comfortable during the filming. The Emmy-nominated actress told ‘The Independent’ that she never felt any pressure from the show’s director, adding how he never forced her to do anything that she didn’t want to do, nor did he insert nudity when it wasn’t essential to the script. Sweeney told how she “never felt like Sam has pushed it on me or was trying to get a nude scene into an HBO show.”
But she also highlighted the double standards when it comes to shooting such scenes. “There are hour-long compilations of world-famous male actors with nude scenes who win Oscars and get praised for that work,” she told Grazia Magazine. She continued, “But the moment a woman does it, it degrades them. They’re not actresses. They just take off their tops so they can get a role.” What has perhaps given Sweeney strength in her stand against criticism is the support of her family, especially her grandparents, who have accepted her decision so positively.
