Sydney Sweeney Shuts Down American Eagle Ad Questions at Toronto Film Festival

Sydney Sweeney has no plans to discuss her jeans when she appears at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend.

The actress, 27, spoke to Vanity Fair about her new boxing movie Christy for a preview published Thursday, Sept. 4, shutting down any notion that she might address the controversy regarding her recent American Eagle campaign when she appears in Toronto for Christy‘s world premiere on Friday, Sept. 5.

“I am there to support my movie and the people involved in making it, and I’m not there to talk about jeans,” Sweeney said. “The movie’s about Christy, and that’s what I’ll be there to talk about.”

Sweeney’s American Eagle ad campaign, titled “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” released in July, sparking controversy among some who criticized the ad for seemingly using the word “jeans” as a play on the word “genes” and a hint at eugenics, a school of thought that the National Institute of Health describes as “the use of selective breeding to improve the human race.”

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Critics of the ad called out a video for the campaign that featured Sweeney discussing genes — and jeans — saying, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”

American Eagle wrote in an Aug. 1 statement in response to the controversy that the ad campaign “is and always was about the jeans” and that “great jeans look good on everyone.”

The backlash has loomed over Sweeney’s recent movie releases like Americana and Eden, two of the four movies to release this year she has appeared in. (Her adaptation of bestseller The Housemaid is in theaters Dec. 19.)

In Christy, Sweeney plays the real-life boxer Christy Martin, who competed as a professional in the 1990s and 2000s. Martin, now 57, was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020.

Sweeney, who trained in combat sports as a teenager, told Vanity Fair she gained more than 30 lbs. to portray Martin for the new movie, which also stars Ben Foster, Merritt Wever, Katy O’Brian, Chad L. Coleman and Tony Cavalero. 

“I was blown away that her story wasn’t more known on a universal, global level because it’s just one of the most harrowing and inspiring women that I’ve ever met in my entire life,” she said of the film.