Madame Web was just another job to Sydney Sweeney

Even movie stars have to take shitty jobs to pay the bills every now and again. Sydney Sweeney certainly does—she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2022 that she couldn’t afford to take even a “six-month break” from acting because she didn’t have the funds—although she probably wouldn’t have used the word “shitty” until this past month.

Okay, she’s not explicitly saying it now either, but it’s clearly her attitude towards widely derided tentpole and future cult classic Madame Web, which she was in despite her quip to the contrary (“you definitely did not see me in Madame Web”)last week on Saturday Night Live.

“I was just hired as an actress in it, so I was just along for the ride for whatever was going to happen,” Sweeney told the Los Angeles Times. The film was massively panned by critics (we gave it a “D”) and hasn’t even cracked the $1oo million mark at the box office, a real low point for the once-untouchable franchise.

But while Sweeney, like her co-star Dakota Johnson, hasn’t been shy about critiquing the project—well, she’s been a little more shy than Johnson, but that’s a pretty low bar—there’s another layer to her comment. The Euphoria actor recently began dipping her toes into the production side of things as well; she started her own company, Fifty-Fifty Films, in 2020, and is credited as a producer on her other two major releases from the past four months, rom-com Anyone But You and Catholic horror flick Immaculate, out in theaters March 22. So to say she was just acting in the Marvel blockbuster means a lot more than a clever bit of dissociation.

“I am a very hands-on collaborator. I like being able to give ideas, be a part of it, help come up with solutions. It just changes the whole process,” Sweeney expanded. “It’s so hard for me now to be on a set and not be able to help in any type of way and be able to take action. And being able to actually have a voice and have a valued opinion—it means so much.” Maybe if she was allowed to help out on this particular set she could have saved the day for everyone in the end.