Inside the Surprise Success of Sydney Sweeney Thriller ‘The Housemaid’: A ‘Family Feud’ Appearance That Went Viral and Servicing an Underserved Female Audience

There’s a scene in “The Housemaid” in which Sydney Sweeney and Brandon Sklenar watch an old episode of “Family Feud” with host Richard Dawson. When they were filming the tension-filled sequence in early 2025, a lightbulb suddenly turned on in Sweeney’s head.

“Syd goes, ‘We’ve got to go on ‘Family Feud.’ And I was like, ‘That’s a hilarious idea,’” the film’s director Paul Feig recalls. “And I called Lionsgate and said, Syd wants to do ‘Family Feud’ and they’re like, ‘We’ll make it happen.’”

Lionsgate’s publicity team did just that. Feig and the film’s stars, including Amanda Seyfried, competed on the Dec. 4 episode of ABC’s “Celebrity Family Feud.” The episode went viral, driving 1.5 million video views within the linear window, according to Talkwalker Social Content Ratings, which tracks interactions for broadcast and cable entertainment series in primetime. And it set the…