Every refreshing thing Sydney Sweeney has said about NOT being a nepo baby

Sydney Sweeney is not like her Madame Web co-star, Dakota Johnson, as she can in no way be considered a nepo baby and has previously made her feelings about the topic very known!

Raising this all again feels relevant because Dakota made her feelings very clear about how she feels being asked about her Hollywood family connections the other day. Basically, it’s not positive! Apparently, it is “boring” and “incredibly annoying”, according to Dakota.

While this is also fair enough, because you know if someone asked me about my family at work I’d be like ‘give it a rest,’ but what about the stars who don’t have a 60s siren for a grandmother? One of those includes Dakota’s Marvel on-screen partner, Sydney, who has spoken about it at length since getting her big break in Euphoria as  Cassie Howard. In the show, her character is the big sister to Maude Apatow’s character Lexi. Maude is the daughter of the film director Judd Apatow and his actress wife, Leslie Mann.

Many considered Maude to be who she was talking about when she first opened up about it to The Hollywood Reporter in July 2022. Probably frustrated at the assumption she was fully in her bag, she revealed she actually couldn’t afford to stop working because “they don’t pay actors like they used to. If I wanted to take a six-month break, I don’t have income to cover that. I don’t have someone supporting me, I don’t have anyone I can turn to to pay my bills or call for help.”

Last March, the topic came up again when Sydney highlighted how the current nature of the industry, along with not being “an established star” left her without much choice about the quality of roles she takes. Her financial commitments to both her team and her family kept her working. Like many a millennial freelancer, she had to add income streams like endorsement deals with brands like Miu Miu and so on.

“I take deals because I have to. They don’t pay actors like they used to, and with streamers, you no longer get residuals,” she told the Sun newspaper. “The established stars still get paid, but I have to give five per cent to my lawyer, ten per cent to my agents, three per cent or something like that to my business manager.”

In June, Sydney also spoke about how she “felt a responsibility” to keep ploughing on in Hollywood based on how much her family had sacrificed for her.

“I just never accepted failure. I hated the answer ‘no.’ And I felt a responsibility to my family because I felt like we gave up and sacrificed so much for a dream that a little girl had. And I knew that I had to just keep going and keep working, and keep working really, really hard — work my ass off — because I couldn’t do anything else. I didn’t dream of anything else,” she told ES Magazine.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• Ranking Dakota Johnson’s Madame Web press tour moments by how unhinged they are

• Dakota Johnson’s ridiculously rich and famous family tree, explained

• Tropical islands and five-carat diamonds: Inside Alex Cooper’s rich AF engagement

Photo credit via Euphoria and Madame Web