It sounds like girl power isn’t exactly running rampant in Tinseltown.
Sydney Sweeney, best known for her role in the US drama Euphoria, is fed up with the phoniness in Hollywood, where she says many tout women’s empowerment while tearing others down behind the scenes.
“Women empowering other women is a facade,” said the actor in an interview with Vanity Fair published on Wednesday. “It’s very disheartening to see women tear other women down.”
The insincerity in Hollywood isn’t Sydney’s only gripe. She also spoke out about a lack of mentorship in the industry.
“Especially when women who are successful in other avenues of their industry see younger talent working really hard — hoping to achieve whatever dreams that they may have — and then trying to bash and discredit any work that they’ve done,” the two-time Emmy nominee said.
Sydney, who noted she was still trying to “figure it out,” shared some theories about the state of the industry.
“There’s so many studies and different opinions on the reasoning behind it,” she said. “I’ve read that our entire lives, we were raised — and it’s a generational problem — to believe only one woman can be at the top. There’s one woman who can get the man. There’s one woman who can be, I don’t know, anything.
“So then all the others feel like they have to fight each other or take that one woman down instead of being like, let’s all lift each other up.”
It’s likely that Sydney’s take is rooted in her personal experiences, after a veteran Hollywood producer went on record insulting her appearance and prowess as a box office draw earlier this year.