We know and love Sydney Sweeney as the troubled high schooler Cassie in Euphoria, the terrifying and whip-smart daughter Olivia in The White Lotus, the curious Pippa in The Voyeurs, the tortured Alice in Sharp Objects, and the lost Eden in The Handmaid’s Tale. Now, the Emmy-nominated actress has stepped into the shoes of NSA whistleblower and ex-intelligence specialist Reality Winner.
Sweeney’s new film Reality landed on HBO on Monday. Based on a true story, Tina Satter’s directorial debut follows the FBI’s interrogation of Winner, the then-25-year-old employee for a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who was suspected of having mishandled classified information. A PSA is typed across the screen in the beginning of the film: “The FBI documented the following events with an audio recorder. The dialogue in this movie is taken entirely from the transcript of that recording.” The events first inspired Satter’s 2019 play Is This a Room that premiered both off and on Broadway.
On June 3, 2017, Winner was arrested in Augusta, Georgia for leaking classified documents to the media, detailing Russia’s interference in the 2016 United States presidential election in a stealth email operation. Winner pleaded guilty in 2018 and was given the longest prison sentence ever imposed for the unauthorized release of government information – just over five years for violating the Espionage Act.
Winner was released from prison in June 2021 for good behavior. She is concluding her sentence in home confinement and will remain under supervised release until 2024.
In a sea of high tensions, awkward interactions and hesitant admissions, Sweeney and her co-stars Josh Hamilton and Marchánt Davis give scintillating performances that captivate the audience.
Sweeney told Entertainment Weekly, “There were multiple layers to it that I was fascinated and drawn in by.” She said her character “embodies all of these different contradictions that defy what it means to be a woman, a veteran a millennial.”
Sweeney got in touch with her character when Satter introduced the Euphoria actress to her real-life counterpart. “Once I met with Reality and I got to know her, she really truly speaks her mind,” Sweeney told Variety. “Everything she was saying in the transcript, she was feeling and thinking. I was able to just find all the different layers underneath it. I truly enjoyed it.”
Earlier this month, the film premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. During the event, Sweeney defended Winner, telling Variety, “I hope that people see Reality as a human being and that they stop letting articles and tabloids label people and put thoughts into their minds. Hopefully they see this humanized experience and get to come up with their own opinions.”
“It was an exciting new experience for myself,” she said. “We’re really just showing a moment in a woman’s life. It’s truly just what happens, verbatim.”
Since achieving stardom as a Euphoria breakout, Sweeney has been calculated in choosing a wide array of characters to play. She told the publication, “There’s always people who see me as Cassie or see me as Olivia. They send me scripts that are just like that. It’s the ones I have to fight for that usually are the ones that I want that are different, like Reality.”
Sweeney said, “I had to audition for it. I had to put myself on tape and send in my audition just like everybody else. It was the same for White Lotus. They didn’t think that I was right for White Lotus because I did Euphoria. So I put myself on tape, I auditioned for White Lotus just like everybody else and had a call back like everybody else.”
Making sure she isn’t type-casted, Sweeney said, “I could get offered roles that are similar to the ones that I’ve played, but the ones that are different, the ones that surprise people that I do, are the ones that I usually have to fight for.”
Foraying into the romantic-comedy genre for the first time in Anyone But You with Glen Powell, Sweeney will also star in Echo Valley alongside Julianne Moore, Immaculate with fellow White Lotus alum Simona Tabasco, Madame Web with Dakota Johnson and will reprise her role as Cassie Howard in the third season in Euphoria.
