Sydney Sweeney has more to say about participating in her now-controversial denim campaign with American Eagle.
“I was honestly surprised by the reaction. I did it because I love the jeans and love the brand,” Sweeney, 28, told People in an interview published on Friday, December 5. “I don’t support the views some people chose to connect to the campaign.”
She continued, “Many have assigned motives and labels to me that just aren’t true.”
The Housemaid star was the face of American Eagle’s denim campaign when it launched this summer and featured the tagline, “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.” The ad used a play on the words “jean” and “gene,” which sparked social media outrage that AE and Sweeney were promoting eugenics. (Eugenics is a widely discredited belief that aims to improve human genetics and is often associated with white supremacy.)
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Both AE and Sweeney denied the accusations, defending their intention to solely sell blue jeans. The actress, for her part, further stressed to People that she always tries to “lead with kindness.”
“Anyone who knows me knows that I’m always trying to bring people together. I’m against hate and divisiveness,” Sweeney told the outlet. “In the past, my stance has been to never respond to negative or positive press, but recently, I have come to realize that my silence regarding this issue has only widened the divide, not closed it. I hope this new year brings more focus on what connects us instead of what divides us.”
Sweeney previously broke her silence on the controversial ad last month, revealing to GQ that she never considered the possibility the tagline would be so divisive.
“It’s not that 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,” she told GQ in a November profile. “I’m filming Euphoria [season 3 now], so I’m working 16-hour days and I don’t really bring my phone on set, so I work and then I go home and I go to sleep. I didn’t really see a lot of it.”
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Sweeney, who added that she “literally” wears jeans and a T-shirt “every day of [her] life,” wasn’t bothered by the backlash either.
“I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear,” she told GQ, also noting her awareness about the business side of the campaign. “I was aware of the numbers as it was going. So when I saw all the headlines of in-store visits were down a certain percentage, none of it was true. It was all made up, but nobody could say anything because [the company was] in their quiet period.”
She concluded, “It was all just a lot of talk, and because I knew at the end of the day what that ad was for, and it was great jeans, it didn’t affect me one way or the other.”
American Eagle also released a statement regarding the campaign.
“‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story,” the retailer wrote in an August post shared via social media. “We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
