Halsey Defends Sydney Sweeney After Jeans Ad Controversy

Los Angeles Special Screening Of “Americana” - Arrivals

Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage

Over the past few weeks, Sydney Sweeney has been in the news quite a bit — for her much-discussed American Eagle jeans ad, her apparent political leanings, and for maybe dating Machine Gun Kelly. What hasn’t been making quite as many headlines? Her new movie. Americana, an indie crime thriller, has been widely deemed a commercial flop after making just $500,000 its opening weekend.

Now, Halsey, who co-stars in the movie with Sweeney, is sticking up for Americana and encouraging fans to see it. In a post to their Instagram story, Halsey downplayed the controversy over Sweeney’s jeans ad, calling it “the 24 hr gossip tabloid denim bullshit,” per “Page Six.” “You should go see this movie,” the singer wrote, sharing an image of Americana’s poster. Halsey lauded the director, Tony Tost, saying he “made an exceptional film, in honor of a genre he knows intimately” and called him an “incredible artist who made a great film with a group of hardworking, talented people.” “If you love cinema, then you should know that cinema comes first. This is cinema,” they wrote.

In another post, Halsey again threw their support behind Tost and the crew, per Deadline. “I do agree that our words are important in this climate,” they wrote. “I don’t, however, think that it’s fair for the news cycle to predatorily rip a hardworking director and his hardworking crew for their film that is completely separate-from and unrelated-to a (pretty dumb) advertising take.”

Tost himself has acknowledged the movie’s rough debut, seemingly also blaming it on Sweeney’s ad. In an X post on Friday, Tost said Americana had been “gobbled up by the zeitgeist.” “One of the great things about movies is that they outlive the zeitgeist into which they were released,” he said. “As someone whose first film sorta got gobbled up by the zeitgeist, I’ll be curious to see how it’ll stand up after this moment is over. Hopefully fairly well!” I guess that’s what streaming numbers are for.