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On Instagram, you’ll find Sydney Sweeney attending movie premieres, posing on film sets, and sharing glamorous photo shoots with high-fashion designers. On TikTok, however, she’s a full-on mechanic.
The 24-year-old actor started fixing up her “vintage dream car,” a bright red original 1969 Ford Bronco, during the pandemic with no prior knowledge about how to make a car run (though her uncle would work on aircrafts and old cars when she was growing up). During quarantine, Sydney tells Teen Vogue she became obsessed with car auction sites. “I’ve always wanted a Bronco, and I got one. I called up my friend’s dad Rod Emory and was like, ‘Rod, I need a space in your shop,’” she says. These days, she’s finishing the transmission, turning it from manual to automatic — “which my mom was really mad about” — and she’s already rebuilt all of it, switched out the suspension, and put in new brakes — “because they were drum brakes, which definitely wouldn’t be enough in LA.” Next, she’s planned a 100 mile road-tripping test drive, and then she’ll start tearing up the inside.
“It’s going to be the start of many,” she says. “People say, ‘What do you do for you?’ This is my escape. I feel like this is a relationship between me and the car and the parts.” She’s documented the whole process on TikTok, sharing a different part of herself than fans might typically see on social media. Still, she’s at the reins. You see what she wants you to see.
It’s an idea at the center of Sydney’s newest role in The Voyeurs, out now on Amazon Prime Video. She plays twenty-something ophthalmologist Pippa, who has just moved in with her boyfriend Thomas (Justice Smith), only to discover their apartment looks directly in on the windows across the street. That means they have a front-row view to the sexual activities of their neighbors, a couple played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo and Ben Hardy. Curiosity turns to binoculars turns to audio surveillance as Thomas and Pippa (especially Pippa) become entranced by the exciting, risky lives the neighbors seem to lead. As everything spirals out of Pippa’s control, The Voyeurs turns from thriller to modern fable, cautioning about social media and the filters through which we see each other.
That tracks with Sydney’s own perceptions of social media and what it can do. “It’s a deceitful window into somebody’s life that is filled with filters,” she says. “It’s not reality in any way.” While she acknowledges social media’s positive role in giving voice to important issues and platforms to people who speak out about injustice, there’s still a cost. “We’ve all become stalkers in our own sense, and we spy into people’s windows.”
The movie’s arrival coincides with a new Wall Street Journal report about how Facebook knows that Instagram negatively affects teenage girls, according to company documents, and can worsen body image issues and anxiety. Sydney has been open in the past about how hurtful comments do reach her and can be hard to deal with. “It definitely puts me down some days. I think that it does for everyone, even when you say it doesn’t, it does,” she says. “Turning it off helps. Being surrounded by real people helps.”
Still it’s difficult to navigate, especially since the Euphoria star often receives critical comments about her decision to appear naked on screen, and conversely, has to deal with her cinematic nudes being screenshotted and spread across social media, popping up out of context. She told The Guardian recently that she disassociates from her characters, but that’s complicated, too.
“It’s definitely out of my control,” she tells Teen Vogue. “[But] I know what I’m getting into as I get into it. The easiest way that I’ve handled and separated myself from it is — and not everyone is going to agree — I’ve made it where when I see that picture, that is not me. That is Cassie. Or that is Pippa. You’re getting to see character, and me as Sydney is very separate. When I see a picture like that, I truly say, that’s Cassie’s nude, or that’s Pippa’s nude.”
At the same time, she wishes the reactions wouldn’t take on a tone of shame, especially one that’s a double standard for the way men are treated for doing the same thing.
“I truly believe that love and the human body and the female body is another art form and is another way to communicate love and emotion and communication,” Sydney says. “You can watch people brutalize and murder each other on TV, but then the moment someone shows their body it’s [fake gasp], ‘Oh my god, horror.’ I know many successful male actors who, if you put all their films together where they’re either nude or have a sex scene it could be hours worth. But then they win Oscars. The moment a girl says it, it takes away from their acting. Everyone’s like, she just shows her boobs because she can’t act.” She mentions her work in Handmaid’s Tale, Everything Sucks!, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and more: “I did all that before [I showed my body]. So do your research.”
Indeed, at this point Sydney’s body of work is pretty staggering. She recently starred in HBO’s summer hit The White Lotus as one half of the vicious teen duo Olivia and Paula (Brittany O’Grady). At one point in The Voyeurs, one of Pippa’s friends tell her she’s still a “good person” despite her many unwise decisions; it’s a moment that feels reminiscent of Olivia imploring Paula to believe she’s not like her oblivious, wealthy, colonizing family, even though she clearly is. When comparing the two, Sydney muses, “I think that no one is purely always good and everyone knows it, but they want to try and cover up and make themselves seem as good as they can.”
Meanwhile, she’s currently filming Euphoria season 2, which she says has a “little bit” left to film before they’re done. She plays the sensitive, insecure Cassie, who goes through one thing after another as she struggles to find validation in the guys she dates. What’s next for her in season 2?
“Cassie needs to get it together,” Sydney laughs. “I have mental debates over Cassie, because I’m very much a hopeless romantic, teen heartthrob girl at heart, so sometimes I want what’s bad for Cassie because I know it’s what would make her happy. Even though it’s unhealthy or bad, that’s what her heart yearns for because I know how she would feel if she gets it. At the same time, I’m like ‘Oh my god, you need to stop everything, Cassie.’”
On top of all that, she and her team have been writing a few episodes for the upcoming novel adaptation The Player’s Table, which she’s executive producing through her production company Fifty-Fifty. The series will star Sydney and her good friend Halsey as students dealing with the aftermath of their classmate’s murder. (And in case you were curious, Sydney’s favorite tracks off Halsey’s new album are “Girl is a Gun” and “Darling.”)
The experience has been an education for Sydney as she’s developing confidence in her own creative voice. “There’s so many opinions that go into it,” she says. “Sometimes I agree, sometimes I disagree, and sometimes I don’t always win. That’s just being a newbie, and hopefully my voice will get stronger and stronger, where I don’t have to fight the battles.”
Having her own company, and garnering respect from the studios she’s working with, also gives her something else: agency. “I feel powerful,” she says, “which is really cool at such a young age.”
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