Box office anxiety, ‘Euphoria’ return, and those blasted jeans: Analysing Sydney Sweeney’s formula going into 2026

Sydney Sweeney rose to new heights in 2025 — a blend of various scandals and titles made for a headline worthy year for the 28-year-old actress and producer.

Among the highlights of her year, Sweeney’s devotion to new alliances caused her to lose a sizable portion of her prior audience.

Which way will the rising star go in 2026?

Sydney Sweeney’s great jeans

Her appearance in the American Eagle advert for the brand’s denim collection launched in July, catapulted the speculation around her political affiliation like never before.

Her blue-eyed gaze piercing the camera lens was accompanied by the campaign’s subsequently notorious tagline, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”

Perceived as a wordplay on genes, the project was blasted for its seemingly eugenics-related messaging, one that the Euphoria star did nothing to condemn — until she was forced to.

Initially sticking with her choice to participate in the campaign, even defending it, Sweeney went viral while responding to a GQ journalist who gave her the opportunity to clear the air surrounding the controversy.

“I think that when I have an issue that I wanna speak about, people will hear,” was her simple reaction.

While the controversy did well for Sweeney’s partnership with American Eagle, her dream release tanked.

BBC reported in September that the brand’s shares skyrocketed following the controversial commercial’s release.

On the other side of the equation, Sweeney experienced a crushing box office blow following the release of Christy, a sports biopic which is finding itself uncertain in awards consideration.

While the actress described a direct endorsement from Donald Trump regarding her advert as “surreal”, she soon found out that the current serving president’s MAGA crowd does not make for the most reliable cinema-going audience for a poignant drama. Even more specifically, one about a lesbian boxer fighting her way out of an abusive heterosexual marriage.

By December, she changed her tune about the “great jeans” bit, telling PEOPLE, “I don’t support the views some people chose to connect to the campaign. Many have assigned motives and labels to me that just aren’t true.”

Moving forward

Despite her reconsideration around the year’s end, even Sweeney’s harshest critics would have to concede that the formula she stuck with for so long did in fact work.

The actress, who is slated to return with Euphoria in 2026 once again, has never shied away from endorsing scandalously bizarre brands.

She previously made headlines after promoting a soap for Dr. Squatch, a bath products line for men, apparently infused with her bathwater.

Called Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss, the item sold out within “seconds” of its release in June, per Variety.

Her choice to participate in several commercial campaigns for a wide range of brands and companies have kept her busy, relevant, and paid in between her acting jobs.

The question going into 2026 would then be if Sydney Sweeney will prioritise her work and step away from other promotions, publicised or otherwise.

Recovering reputation

With the comfortable reception of her last release for 2025, The Housemaid, Sweeney was able to ease her box office anxiety.

In 2026, she will further retreat into the comfort of HBO’s Euphoria, which has been a definitive source of success for its entire cast as the dramatic series always draws audiences in huge numbers regardless of its quality.

One of her additional projects in the pipeline boasts a title which has come to define her entire brand at this point — Scandalous!, a biopic film in which she is will play Old Hollywood actress Kim Novak, set to be directed by her Euphoria co-star, Colman Domingo.

With the plot based on Novak’s interracial relationship with Sammy Davis Jr., the movie’s release and its subject matter could potentially drive a wedge between herself and her right-wing fans, which is probably how she would like things amid her gradual recovery of reputation.