It is one of the questionable perks of Donald Trump’s “wall of sound” approach to communication that the slightly icky moment of connection between the world of Maga and one of Hollywood’s hottest young stars was broadcast live and uncut.
As the US president boarded Air Force One, a reporter asked whether he had any thoughts on Sydney Sweeney, a “very hot actress right now”, being a registered Republican. Of course he did.
“She’s a registered Republican? Ooh, now I love her ad. Is that right? Is Sydney Sweeney … You’d be surprised at how many people are Republicans. That’s what I wouldn’t have known. But I’m glad you told me that. If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic.”
Sweeney, for the uninitiated, and there can’t be many, first gained prominence for her roles in HBO’s Euphoria and The White Lotus and more recently co-starred in the thriller Echo Valley with Julianne Moore.
It has, however, been the 27-year-old’s “more is best” approach to commercial tie-ups and a tendency for the social media algorithms to promote her that has made her inescapable.
She is everywhere, smiling with a dab of rejuvenating cream on her face, straining to inject cool into clog-shaped black loafers or taking selfies with a dog to promote Samsung flip phones.
She can even be found in your bath tub thanks to a collaboration with a men’s personal care company to create a soap called Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss that contains a small amount of the actual water in which she has actually washed.
Her latest advertising campaign has led her into more dangerous waters. “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality, and even eye colour,” she purrs in an advert for American Eagle denims. “My genes are blue,” she says as the camera lingers on her eyes. The strap line: Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.
The whiff of controversy was inevitably picked up with claims that the ad was elevating the white, blond and blue eyed.
One TikTok reaction video that received hundreds of thousands of likes commented “it’s literally giving … Nazi propaganda”. JD Vance, never one to miss such a moment, decided that this had his name all over it.
He criticised the unhinged Dems and hailed an “all-American beautiful woman”, adding, “so much of the Democrats is oriented around hostility to basic American life”.
Then, amid the extra scrutiny of the woman behind the storm, it emerged that Sweeney had registered as a Republican voter in Florida a few months before Trump won his second US presidency.
As Trump’s delight illustrated, the benefit to the president is clear, said David Cracknell, a former political editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times who now runs his own PR company.
There is a long history of politicians chasing the celebrity endorsement, with JFK among the earliest to spot the benefits of having Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr on his side.
Last summer, Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation published research that suggested celebrity voices could be “incredibly powerful” in promoting civic engagement and altering polling numbers. Online voter registration and poll worker volunteer rates were found to increase when a celebrity promoted them.
Celebrity endorsements from the likes of Taylor Swift and Oprah Winfrey did not help Kamala Harris’s cause at the last election but the tacit endorsement of a young woman could be particularly helpful at a time when Trump is under pressure over his past relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. However, Cracknell said the up-side for the celebrity was far less clear.
“It usually does end in tears when any celebrity gets involved in politics, just look at Kanye West and how his endorsement for Trump was mixed up with his reputational downfall,” said Cracknell. “Then he said later that he felt used by Trump. More fool you for getting involved because the politicians are much better at manipulating the media, they are doing it on a second by second basis, Trump literally.”
Mark Borkowski, whose PR clients have included Michael Jackson, Joan Rivers and Van Morrison, said that the golden rule of avoiding political entanglements, particularly in the infancy of a career when widespread goodwill was crucial, was there for a reason.
When Taylor Swift praised two Democratic candidates in her home state of Tennessee back in 2018 it led to a fearsome backlash but she stuck to her guns, going on to back Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for president.
It can hardly be said that her career has suffered but Swift was established, said Borkowski, as were other celebrities, such as John Wayne and Charlton Heston who threw themselves into political causes, the former with the Republican party and the latter the civil rights movement and then the National Rifle Association.
“I am fascinated by Sydney Sweeney,” Borkowski said. “She’s become the sort of delicious siren of the gen Z media. She has got all the echoes of Jayne Mansfield or Marilyn Monroe, but she’s totally over promoted.
“She’s clickbait and it’s the worst idea to declare a political affiliation, especially in the inferno that is American discourse. It’s a massive PR risk because she hasn’t made it yet. She is not Margot Robbie, she does not have Oscars behind her.”
Sweeney is yet to comment on the news of her political sympathies but plenty of others, beyond Trump, will have a say, said Borkowski. “Silence in politics is really important now because if you don’t, you’re going to be exposed by the full weight of the opposition on social media,” he said. “It’ll be carnage. She’s a bombshell, but she’s not box office yet.”
