Sydney Sweeney tried her hardest not to rekindle any controversy as she weighed in on the blue jeans commercial that inspired this summer’s most maddening discourse.
Four months after American Eagle dropped an ad campaign saluting the way the “Euphoria” star’s “great genes” made her look in their “great jeans,” she managed to gingerly dismiss critics while also appearing to distance herself from her defenders.
“I did a jean ad,” she told GQ in an interview published Tuesday. “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.”
But Sweeney’s outfit wasn’t what turned the commercials into a cultural lightning rod when they dropped back in July.
A few stray social media comments wondering if there was a whiff of white supremacy in focusing on the blue-eyed blonde’s superior genes got cherry-picked and promoted by conservative influencers eager for a new example of wokeness gone awry.
The debate spiraled into the political world, as Vice President JD Vance called the backlash the reason why Democrats aren’t winning young men while President Donald Trump publicly delighted over speculation Sweeney was a Republican.
Asked what it was like to have the president and his second-in-command talk about her and the ad, she opted for the word “surreal.”
Interviewer Katherine Stoeffel then opened the door for Sweeney to share her opinion, saying, “I think it would be totally human to feel — I would probably feel— thankful that somebody had my back in public, and conveniently some very powerful people. I wondered if you felt that way.”
“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,” deflected Sweeney, who is in the midst of promoting her newest film,“Christy.”
“I kind of just put my phone away. I was filming every day.”
Giving one last chance to weigh in on everything, GQ asked if she had anything to say about the ad itself or the idea that “white people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority” in today’s political climate.
“I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear,” she replied.