If you own a mobile device, you probably saw clips of GQ’s Katherine Stoeffel interviewing Sydney Sweeney this week.

“Based Twitter” was incensed at Katherine seemingly trying, for more than three minutes, to bait Sydney into apologizing for that American Eagle ad last summer, wherein Sydney, looking hot and wearing, you know, jeans, was the subject of a pun: “SYDNEY SWEENEY HAS GREAT JEANS.” (Get it? Genes? Jeans?)

Assuming the clips were less forgiving than the full-length interview because of the laws of the internet, I listened to the whole thing. Come to find out: it’s actually worse than the clips. It’s really bad. I honestly can’t deal with it.

The reporter’s whole vibe was kind of: BuzzFeed nark in little white sneakers crossed with your best friend’s mom who’s not really authorized to discipline you but is mad at you for something that you did?

She front-loaded just about every question with an accusation (“context”) and raised eyebrows that betrayed the feelings she wouldn’t say out loud. Where the general ethos Sydney was communicating (she’s an extremely private person for: reasons) was judged, not explored. (You can watch the whole video here.)

First, they talked about Sydney’s new movie Christy, where Sydney plays a boxer whose career is “privately altered,” as GQ put it, “by her abusive relationship with her coach turned husband.” It clearly meant a lot to Sydney. She described her background in martial arts — she kickboxed from ages 13-19 for the thrill of “sometimes” winning against the guys — coming in handy during a surprisingly personal story arc.

The actors in Christy performed “full contact,” so Sydney was actually getting punched in the face and punching other women in the face, which is, shall we say, viscerally arresting. And on top of all that, Sydney started connecting to the main character (like through a literal book she writes to flesh out each character she plays) more than expected.

“She is fighting a fight in her home life, and she’s also fighting a fight in the public,” Sydney said. “And I think that, for me, I find myself in a lot of battles — both in front, and not in front of the world. So I definitely can relate.”

Art is how Sydney speaks out about issues like domestic violence, she explained. “Through my characters in my movies, it’s a way for me to be able to do my part that I can and spread awareness in different ways… And that’s how I’ve always learned to communicate.”

Katherine replied: given stuff like Euphoria (which doesn’t take a moral stance on the different problems it explores, like teen drug use), Sydney’s career doesn’t look very political. And yet: “you have become very swept up in politics. And so I wondered if that has surprised you, as you put your ideas and yourself into art, not commentary.”

*this was the first among many times in the interview that Sydney had to process the different levels of fuckery in the question with her face muscles*

“I’ve always believed that I’m not here to tell people what to think,” she said. “I’m just here to kind of open their eyes to different ideas. And so I think that’s why I gravitate towards characters and stories that are complicated and are maybe morally questionable and characters that are, on the page, hard to like, but then you find the humanity underneath them.”

After sort of affirming (?) the idea of artists keeping themselves “a little bit” separate from politics, Katherine moved on to the cultural obsession with Sydney reaching a kind of climax: “Did your sense of your own fame change this year?”

(First of all, what?)

Cue Sydney’s extremely sane answer:

“No. I surround myself with a really, really strong group of people who have been in my life since I was little. And they take me out of Hollywood, take me out of this bubble, and remind me what the real world is. And that that’s where I exist. The idea of fame — it doesn’t apply to my personal life. I’m just Syd.”

“You can’t feel the difference in the volume at times?”

“If I turn on my phone, yes. If I have my phone off, and I’m home, no.”

“So what is it like now being single?”

Lol. You may not see how that is a natural follow-up question, but Katherine sure did. After Sydney produced and starred in the rom-com Anyone But You, she played a “game” of letting rumors fly about a romance with Glen Powell, her co-star, Katherine asserted.

“We all now know that that was a projection, let’s say, on our parts — that wasn’t real. But it occurred to me that maybe that story doesn’t go so viral if you’re not a very private person,” Katherine said. “I imagine there are personal benefits to being private about your personal life, but are there also professional benefits to being private about your personal life?”

Wow, so, the question was roughly: is Sydney really private, or is she just pretending to be, such that the secrecy makes her even more rich and powerful?

*facial processing*

“The professional benefits for me and being private — is for my own just health and sanity. If I let everybody in all the time, I have nothing for myself.” She’s just 28 years old, Sydney said; she’s still going to make mistakes and grow. “And I think that it’s important to be able to do that without having to say every single thing all the time.”

“Right. Okay.”

Lol.

“I don’t really let other people define who I am,” Sydney said.

“I’m happy to hear that. I have a lot of secondhand concern for you lately,” Katherine said while fake laughing. “We’re sort of talking around this American Eagle ad right now.”

Aha.

And here, readers, take note: a masterclass. Not so much in Sydney’s answers, although I find them impressive — more in the self-possession they required to begin with. It takes a lot of balls to just say “no,” and to leave it at that. And that’s what she did several times.

“Were you surprised by the reaction?”

“I did a jean ad” Sydney replied, curtly. “I mean, the reaction definitely was a surprise. But I love jeans. All I wear are jeans!”

“I think I know how you’re going to answer this. But I’m going to ask anyway,” Katherine replied. President Donald Trump posted about the ad on Truth Social, a “very crazy moment for anyone. And I wondered what that was like?”

“It was surreal.”

“It was surreal. And it would be totally human — I would probably feel, like, thankful that somebody had my back in public, you know? And, conveniently, some very powerful people had my back in public. And I wondered if you felt that way.”

(What could possibly be the point of this question other than trying to get Sydney to say she’s a Trump supporter by accident or something?)

“It’s not that I didn’t have that feeling, but I wasn’t thinking of it like that. Of any of it. I kind of just put my phone away.”

Sydney was filming Euphoria, working 16-hour days, she said: “And I don’t really bring my phone on set. So I work and then I go home and I go to sleep. I don’t really see a lot of it.”

“You’ve made a really good case for keeping your thoughts and your life separate from that work. But the risk is that, you know, there’s a chance that somebody will get some idea about what you think about certain issues and feel like, ‘I don’t want to see Christy because of that.’ Like do you worry about that?”

“No.”

(Lmao.)

“No, no. If somebody is closed off because of something they read online to a powerful story like Christy,” Sydney added, while shaking her damn head, “then I hope something else can open their eyes to being open to art and being open to learning. And I’m not going to be affected by that.”

“Yeah. You’ve come here really willing to talk about this whole discourse that doesn’t have that much to do with you, and I’m grateful for that. Is there something that you want to say about the ad itself?”

“The ad spoke for itself.”

“You think the ad spoke for itself. Okay. And the criticism of the content, which was basically that, maybe specifically in this political climate, white people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority. That was kind of the criticism, broadly speaking. And since you are talking about this, I just wanted to give you an opportunity” (emphasis mine) “to talk about that specifically?”

*derisive stare*

“I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.”

Man. Honestly y’all, all I can really do, all we can all really do, is shake our collective damn head, and watch this super hot, super smart 28-year-old cook. Did you know that Sydney was the valedictorian of her high school class? She was the valedictorian of her high school class.

Her IQ is just as voluptuous as her, you know, other assets.

Which is maybe why she doesn’t scroll to the point of rotting her brain, or yap to get approval from people like Katherine. And that’s the whole tweet.

— Blake Dodge