Syd­ney Sweeney: ​‘I’ve always felt that my duty is to my char­ac­ters, and to my work’

Eye-grab­bing roles on TV’s The White Lotus and Eupho­ria estab­lished Syd­ney Sweeney as a fan-favorite tal­ent. Her lat­est turn as doc­u­ment-leak­er Real­i­ty Win­ner in Tina Satter’s Real­i­ty rein­tro­duces America’s sweet­heart as a tech­ni­cal per­former of rig­or­ous con­trol and untold depth. Recit­ing the tran­script of the NSA employee’s grilling by two FBI agents as dia­logue, she faced a more pro­nounced ver­sion of a clas­sic actor’s para­dox: how does one come off as nat­u­ral­is­tic and spon­ta­neous while adher­ing to the exact let­ter of the giv­en text? Sweeney explained her approach to this unique exer­cise, con­fessed to a bit of in-the-spot­light nerves, and mused on movie stardom.

LWLies: This is such a tech­ni­cal per­for­mance, where every pause and inci­den­tal ​‘um’ is spec­i­fied in the tran­script of Real­i­ty Winner’s inter­ro­ga­tion. How did you have to adjust your process to the strict­ness of this script?

Sweeney: That was one of the biggest chal­lenges for me, because I like to find the free­dom in the words of a char­ac­ter, so it was hard to adapt to. But I loved it. That was one of the rea­sons I want­ed to play Real­i­ty, for how dif­fer­ent it would be than every­thing I’ve done before. There were plen­ty of days when I’d have been up late the night before, going over and over, try­ing to get every­thing down ver­ba­tim. It’s an exer­cise for the brain. On Eupho­ria, we have a lot of room to explore. [Showrun­ner] Sam [Levin­son] real­ly lets us run with our char­ac­ters. We cre­ate them, and we know them so well, where­as with Real­i­ty, I’m going from a real expe­ri­ence for a real per­son. You have to hon­or the per­son you’re play­ing as much as pos­si­ble. We actu­al­ly, sur­pris­ing­ly enough, did not have rehearsal time. We shot it in six­teen days, and we did a table read a few days before the shoot, but then we just dove right in.

At the same time, the dia­logue you’re giv­en only rep­re­sents part of a per­for­mance that’s so often about a per­son try­ing to project an image that can cov­er her actu­al reac­tions and motivations. 

Yeah, I always felt like there were mul­ti­ple dia­logues and sub­texts hap­pen­ing at the same time. You’ve got a char­ac­ter who’s con­stant­ly recal­cu­lat­ing what’s going on; in that first scene, she real­ly does start out believ­ing these guys are here to see if the house is for rent. She didn’t see this com­ing, at first. In real time, she’s try­ing to deter­mine every step, every word, every move she’s going to make. There’s so much thought under every exchange, so much that goes unsaid.

In your research, you spoke with Real­i­ty Win­ner from her house arrest. Where does one even begin that con­ver­sa­tion? I assume you can’t just call some­one up and say, ​‘So, tell me about your inner workings.’

Tina had been in con­tact with her moth­er and sis­ter, and once with Real­i­ty her­self before I came on board. I want­ed to speak to her pri­or to prep­ping on this, one, just to know her as a per­son, but two, to under­stand her man­ner­isms and how she speaks. Tina con­nect­ed us, and I got to Zoom with her, start­ed tex­ting her. It’s an inter­est­ing dance, because I wasn’t quite sure how much I could ask of some­one. When I’m build­ing a char­ac­ter, I get to cre­ate mem­o­ries and rela­tion­ships as they come to me. It’s all in my brain. With this, depend­ing on anoth­er per­son, I had to ask myself what would be tak­ing it too far. Reality’s so open, though, so casu­al. She’s fun­ny, quite a wit about her, and she was real­ly gra­cious with her time.

Hav­ing com­plet­ed this, do you have any curios­i­ty about doing theater?

I’ve nev­er done it before. I have an, ah, very inter­est­ing lev­el of stage fright. I get ter­ri­bly anx­ious. So, maybe one day? But… [Laughs.] Come back to me on that one.

This role is also dis­tinct from your past work in its phys­i­cal­i­ty. Real­i­ty Win­ner, a reg­u­lar per­son on a reg­u­lar after­noon in her life, is kind of deglam­or­ized rel­a­tive to the oth­er roles you’ve played. Can you feel that ele­ment in your performance?

I loved it, the raw­ness. I didn’t want any make­up, just want­ed my hair up in a bun, every­thing like she had it on that day. Espe­cial­ly on cam­era, you can see the dirt, and I find that beau­ti­ful in its way. Being able to come in and break it all down, that was a real­ly great expe­ri­ence, as an actor.

There are a few lines that express a hint of body-con­scious­ness, and then after the film, I learned that Real­i­ty Win­ner has had her strug­gles with bulim­ia. It’s not stat­ed in the text, but did this fac­tor into the pro­file of the char­ac­ter you were compiling?

It did, yes, she and I spoke about it. I was aware of this, and want­ed to bring it into the char­ac­ter in a sort of qui­et way. There’s so much to these con­ver­sa­tions, inter­ac­tions that are bring­ing up things from her past, things from when she was twelve in some cas­es, and it can all be silent.

Real­i­ty Win­ner comes from a back­ground we don’t see much of in movies — she’s a young woman, she owns mul­ti­ple guns, she’s from a red state. Did you draw at all from your own upbring­ing, which is a lot clos­er to Reality’s than most Hol­ly­wood types’ would be? 

She’s a pret­ty aver­age per­son, in that any­one can relate to her. But she does have a lot of inter­est­ing con­tra­dic­tions that defy what peo­ple might think about her, box­es they might try to put her in. That’s a big part of what drew me to this character.

You’ve said you start­ed dream­ing of act­ing when you were a kid. Who did you see onscreen at the time that made you want a piece of all that?

I loved Meryl Streep, Angeli­na Jolie, Kate Winslet. All great actresses.

Bona fide movie stars, yeah. We don’t have too many peo­ple like that right now, movie star­dom being a dif­fer­ent beast than it used to be. Some of the projects you choose — the rom­com you’ve got com­ing with Glen Pow­ell, the erot­ic thriller Immac­u­late lat­er this year — seem to point back toward that era in the ​’90s and ear­ly ​’00s.

I don’t know if that con­struct of a movie star is pos­si­ble any­more. There used to be more mys­tery behind all of it. You have so much access to your favorite stars or celebri­ties, and the whole con­cept is dif­fer­ent because of it. Hollywood’s dif­fer­ent than what it used to be; I don’t think that has to be a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just that the world is changing.

Cre­at­ing mys­tique, being elu­sive, that’s not as big a part of it. You share a lot of your life on social media, hob­bies and trav­els and what­not. Do you con­sid­er your­self pret­ty open?

Yeah, I’m a real per­son. I think I’m pret­ty relat­able to a lot of peo­ple; I grew up in a small­er town, pret­ty nor­mal child­hood, so I don’t always feel so Hol­ly­wood, you know? Mak­ing an image of your­self, being a dif­fer­ent per­son for the pub­lic, I think that would get lone­ly. You got­ta live your own life and not wor­ry what oth­ers think of you. I’ve always felt that my duty is to my char­ac­ters, and to my work.

I’m look­ing for­ward to Immac­u­late. Did you get into nun cin­e­ma in prepa­ra­tion for your role?

I did, yeah, some of the old­er ones, Black Nar­cis­sus. I’ve been liv­ing with this movie since I was six­teen, want­i­ng to make it for almost ten years, and we were final­ly able to get a team behind it. This is the first thing I’m ful­ly pro­duc­ing, too, and I’m work­ing with Michael Mohan, who first direct­ed me on Every­thing Sucks when I was nine­teen. He real­ly wants to bring back a cer­tain kind of Hol­ly­wood motion picture.