A Hollywood Producer Slammed Sydney Sweeney But The Actress Had The Perfect Response
Hollywood producer Carol Baum — known for projects like "Father of the Bride" and the 1992 film version of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" — made some comments recently about Sydney Sweeney, and the actress engineered a perfect response through her representatives.
"How sad that a woman in the position to share her expertise and experience chooses instead to attack another woman," Sweeney's team said in a statement to HuffPost meant to respond to Baum's remarks. Apparently, during a recent film screening, Baum slammed Sweeney's looks and acting abilities, going on a bit of a tangent about the young performer.
The rep added, "If tearing down another woman is what Carol has learned during her decades in the business, and she feels it appropriate to pass that on to her students, then that's truly shameful. To unjustly disparage a fellow female producer speaks volumes about Ms. Baum's character." So what exactly did Baum say about Sweeney, and why is the "Euphoria" actor's team firing back?
What did Carol Baum say about Sydney Sweeney, exactly?
According to The Daily Mail, Carol Baum spoke to New York Times journalist Janet Maslin during a screening of the 1988 film "Dead Ringers" — which Baum produced early in her career — and went after Sydney Sweeney for no apparent reason. "There's an actress that everybody loves now — Sydney Sweeney," Baum told Maslin. "I don't get Sydney Sweeney. I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney's movie because I wanted to watch it. I wanted to know who she is and why everybody's talking about her."
Apparently, Baum was specifically talking about Sweeney's recent romantic comedy "Anyone But You," which co-starred Glen Powell and became an immediate box-office sensation upon its release. She also called the movie, which Sweeney produced, "unwatchable."
"I said to my class, 'Explain this girl to me. She's not pretty, she can't act. Why is she so hot?'" Baum continued; the former executive teaches producing at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She then said that nobody in her class could answer except when one student asked a pertinent question — if Sweeney could help get a movie off the ground, then what's the problem?
"I said, 'Well, that's a really good question ... that's a very hard question to answer because we all want to get the movie made and who walks away from a green light? Nobody I know," Baum apparently conceded to the student. '"Your job is to get the movie made.'"
Sydney Sweeney is, by all accounts, an enormous star
Carol Baum is certainly entitled to her opinions about Sydney Sweeney, but there's no denying that the Spokane native is an enormous star. (For her part, Baum told TMZ she wishes she'd never said anything at all.) After working on hits like "Sharp Objects" and "The Handmaid's Tale" early in her career, Sweeney really hit the scene when she joined the cast of Sam Levinson's controversial HBO series "Euphoria" to play the role of Cassie Howard, a beautiful young high schooler who places her self-worth in the hands of the men around her. Sweeney's profile only rose from there.
Sweeney played a sharp, sullen teen in the first season of "The White Lotus" before working with HBO again on the original film "Reality," playing the real-life Air Force veteran Reality Winner. Then came "Anyone But You," which brought back the big studio romantic comedy with plenty of fanfare thanks to the crackling chemistry between Sweeney and Glen Powell — and somehow, Sweeney's cultural goodwill was strong enough that she was even able to survive the box-office bomb that was "Madame Web" with her reputation intact.
Meanwhile, Sweeney's religious horror flick "Immaculate," which marked her emergence as a scream queen, is a project she personally rescued from development hell as a producer — something that, one would think, might impress a producer like Baum. In any case, Sweeney's career will continue to rise to new heights — both as an actor and as a producer.