‘I was absolutely terrified of Olivia’: Sydney Sweeney on her White Lotus character

typically heard two reactions from people who watched The White Lotus this summer: one, that they were obsessed with the HBO show, a breakout hit about a cursed week at a Hawaiian resort. Two, that they were terrified of Olivia, the perpetually unimpressed, bucket hat-wearing dispenser of razor-sharp Gen Z judgment, played with deadpan cruelty by Sydney Sweeney. In a few short years, the actor, who turns 24 on 12 September, has earned a reputation for portraying young adult characters masking deep wells of emotion with cool detachment, from The White Lotus, to Amy Adams’ roommate at a psychiatric facility in HBO’s Sharp Objects, to another breakout HBO show, Euphoria.

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I’m pleased to report that Sweeney, in an interview, is nothing like Olivia (“I was absolutely terrified of Olivia as well,” she says), nor Cassie, the sensitive but dispassionate high schooler she plays on Euphoria. Over the phone, she’s quick to laugh, breezy on the details of her new erotic thriller, Amazon’s The Voyeurs, and quick to emphasize the gulf between herself and her characters. “It’s so strange, I watch my projects, and I don’t remember filming – that’s how separate I am from what I’m doing,” she told the Guardian.

Unlike the numerous young stars who came up through the Disney or Nickelodeon pipelines, Sweeney has not had to renegotiate her public image with difficult, adult material. Euphoria, which premiered in 2019 and whose much-anticipated second season is due early next year, drew headlines, and viewers, for its gritty and often graphic portrayal of modern teenage life – drugs and alcohol, sex, sexting and the titillations and violations therein. As Cassie, Sweeney appeared topless in the first episode; a major plot point was the leak of Cassie’s nude photos and subsequent judgment by her peers.

In The Voyeurs, written and directed by Michael Mohan (with whom she worked with on the Netflix series Everything Sucks!), Sweeney plays Pippa, a twentysomething who moves with her boyfriend, Thomas (Justice Smith) into a Montreal apartment with an expansive view of the young, attractive couple across the street. Glimpses of the couple’s sex life slip into watching and, for Pippa, into obsession; though the film takes a hairpin turn in its final half-hour, it’s not a spoiler to say that, as an erotic thriller in the mostly erstwhile lane of Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, The Voyeurs requires a certain level of nudity, and extended sex scenes, from Sweeney.

Sydney Sweeney in The Voyeurs
Sydney Sweeney in The Voyeurs. ‘It was all very thought out and considerate.’ Photograph: Bertrand Calmeau/Amazon
The prospect of nudity on-screen is not in itself daunting – “I always look at a script and make sure that it’s not just getting thrown in there to be in there,” she said. “What I loved particularly about this scene is that it was more for the female’s pleasure instead of for the male pleasure.” Thanks to an intimacy coordinator on set, a position that has flourished in the #MeToo movement, Sweeney “never felt bad in any sense” during filming of tightly choreographed romantic scenes. “It was all very thought out and considerate.”

Sweeney, whose first main role was in Everything Sucks! in 2018, evinces the shift in industry standards around intimacy in the few years since the 2017 Weinstein reports, which cast a harsh light on Hollywood’s disregard for female performers and crew. She’s worked with an intimacy coordinator on every project, “so I have been very lucky to not have experience anything bad,” she said. “Hopefully we can start getting more intimacy coordinators on every set so that every actor can feel comfortable and safe telling these stories.”

The more intimidating aspect is potential for screengrabs and memes to blast across social media – a violation that already occurred with nude images of Cassie on Euphoria. “To be honest, after Euphoria, I had to stop c