Sydney Sweeney wanted to be challenged by Reality: Its a different muscle playing someone who is real [Exclusive Video Interview] – Yahoo…

Few actresses under 30 could claim as much success as Sydney Sweeney over the last two years. Her breakout performance on HBOs Euphoria scored Sweeney a well-deserved Emmy Award nomination for Best Drama Supporting Actress in 2022 one of two nominations the 25-year-old landed last year (the other being Best Movie/Limited Supporting Actress for The White Lotus). That creative recognition has led her to numerous high-profile projects, including a key part in the Spider-man spinoff Madame Web opposite Dakota Johnson and a lead role with Glen Powell in the Sony romantic comedy Anyone But You.

But the prolific Sweeney who also maintains numerous brand partnerships and a heavy social media presence as well had never come across a project like Reality before. The new HBO film, co-written and directed by Tina Satter and based on her own play, is about the arrest of NSA whistleblower Reality Winner and unfolds in real-time, taking its dialogue and structure directly from the FBIs arrest transcript.

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I am always searching for characters that I havent done before or challenged me in new ways than previous ones have, Sweeney tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. So when Reality came across my table, I was very much drawn to it because of the challenge. And just the script itself. It was just a completely different thing than Ive ever seen before.

Reality opens with Winner being confronted outside her suburban home by two FBI agents (played by Josh Hamilton and Marchant Davis) and eventually moves to a back room in Winners house for the lengthy interrogation scene, which Sweeney estimates comprised almost 60 pages of the economical script. (Reality clocks in at under 90 minutes in total running time.)

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Once we got into that room, we were there and it was basically one scene, Sweeney explains. Tina did such an amazing job of flawlessly finding places to be able to cut because we couldnt film all of that in one day we filmed the whole movie in 16 days. And so we had 10 to 15 pages per day to film, and you kind of just start to feel the weight and the gravity of the situation as the walls slowly come closer and closer in as youre filming, because we filmed most of it in order.

When playing a fictional person like Cassie Howard on Euphoria, Sweeney spends months writing lengthy character bibles filled with details that help her understand the person shes tasked to create onscreen. But for Reality, Sweeney adopted a hybrid approach that combined her own creative imagination with actual conversations she had with Winner over Zoom and text message.

I wanted to find a mixture of the two [research methods] because I wanted to, of course, learn as much as I possibly could about Reality, she says. I knew the box within what her life was and her memories, and I wanted as much as I could learn from her. Then I took all of that knowledge, and I put it into my books, and I just expanded it from there so that I had it was more fleshed out.

Winner was arrested on June 3, 2017, and was sentenced in 2018 to five years and three months in jail for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. She received the longest sentence ever for releasing classified documents to the media but was released from prison in 2021 on account of good behavior. Sweeney says what surprised her about Winner was the former NSA translators sense of humor.

She has quite an interesting sense of humor about herself, Sweeney says. So once I learned that, and I got to know her, and I reread the transcript in the script, I saw so much of that in there that I didnt see before.

Sweeney says Winner supports Reality and her family attended the films premiere at the Berlin Film Festival this year, where Satters feature premiere to rave reviews for its star.

Its a different muscle playing someone who is real, Sweeney says of what shell take from the film. I definitely loved that. And I think that Id really enjoy finding another character thats based off of a real person and diving into the research on that person.

Reality premieres May 29 at 10 p.m. ET on HBO and will stream on Max.

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Sydney Sweeney wanted to be challenged by Reality: Its a different muscle playing someone who is real [Exclusive Video Interview] - Yahoo...