We begged Hollywood for Sydney Sweeney

Sydney Sweeney is back in the news again, because the news keeps making the news about Sydney Sweeney. This week, it’s an interview with Sweeney by GQ, titled “Sydney Sweeney on Life at the Center of the Conversation.” It’s sparked a “wokelash” among people who hate Sydney Sweeney, meaning no one you actually want to know.

Even though GQ is short for Gentlemen’s Quarterly, and the audience is ostensibly gentlemen who like to look at Sydney Sweeney, Katherine Stoeffel, GQ’s features director, conducted the interview. Women have always and will continue to work for GQ, but Stoeffel seems to not understand what gentlemen want and like. Inside American women right now, there are two wolves. Sweeney is one of them. Stoeffel is the other.

The woke left appears determined to paint Sweeney, a hustlingly entrepreneurial actress, as a gateway to white supremacist America. In the interview, Sweeney says that the response to her American Eagle “great jeans” ad was “surreal,” which I’m sure it was, down to the fact that President Trump, king of the culture war, decided to comment on it. That’s not enough for Stoeffel, who wants a scalp.

“I’m literally in jeans and a T-shirt like every day of my life,” says Sweeney.

Same.

“Jeans are uncontroversial, jeans are awesome,” Stoeffel says, with her best vocal fry, while Sweeney laughs.

“I like your jeans,” Sweeney says.

“You look great in your jeans,” says Stoeffel, suddenly raising hope that things might get a little steamy there in the garden. But then comes the boom.

“I think I know how you’re going to answer this, but I’m going to ask anyway. I mean, the President tweeted about the jeans ad.”

Sweeney is still giggling.

“Or Truth Socialed about the jeans ad. And that just seems to me like a very crazy moment for anyone, and I wondered what that was like.”

“It was surreal,” Sweeney says, the laughter having left her eyes.

“It was surreal. And it would be totally human. I would feel thankful that somebody had my back in public. And conveniently, some very powerful people had my back in public.”

The tone ventures into: are you now, Sydney Sweeney, and have you ever been, a member of the Republican party?

“Ech,” Sweeney says.

“I wondered if you felt that way.”

“Mmm,” Sweeney goes, followed by a few seconds pause. “I don’t think that. It’s not like I didn’t have that feeling, but I wasn’t thinking of it like that. Of any of it. I kind of just put my phone away. I was filming every day. I’m filming Euphoria. So I’m working like 16-hour days. And I don’t really bring my phone on set. I work and then I go home and I go to sleep. So I didn’t really see a lot of it.”

Stoeffel continues to press.

“You’ve made a really good case for keeping your thoughts and your life separate from that work. But the risk is that, you know, there’s a chance that somebody will get some idea about what you think about certain issues.”

At this point, you can see in Sweeney’s eyes that she truly hates this person to whom she’s committed an hour of her life.

“Hmm,” she says, while ordering a drone strike in her mind.

“Do you worry about that?” Stoeffel asks.

“No,” Sweeney says.

And yet Stoeffel doesn’t stop, and, in fact, arrives at her gotcha moment. “The criticism of the content was that, basically in this political climate, like white people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority. Like that was kind of the criticism, broadly speaking. And since you were talking about this, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that specifically.”

“I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about,” Sweeney said, “people will hear.”

Sydney Sweeney is what people have been begging for from Hollywood stars for decades: someone who looks good, works hard, shows up on time, stays sober, keeps their opinions basically to themselves and makes their studios gobs of money. Katherine Stoeffel is a striver from a dying media class. One of them is today’s internet main character. The other will be a main character in most of our media lives for the next 20 years. Sweeney’s next movie is about a female boxer. Anyone who’s betting on GQ over her in today’s tense exchange has chosen the wrong fighter. Today, Sydney Sweeney knocked legacy media flat.