Amanda Seyfried Reveals What It Was Really Like Touring With Sydney Sweeney Amid Her American Eagle Backlash

‘The Housemaid’ turned into one of the year’s biggest box office surprises, pairing Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried as a young woman with a troubled past who becomes the live in maid for a wealthy family whose household hides dark secrets. Directed by Paul Feig and based on Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel, the thriller went on to cross $200 million at the global box office, while earning a 75 percent score from critics and a 92 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Long before that success, the two actresses spent months crisscrossing the globe together on a press tour for the film, and they grew close enough that Seyfried has said the pair text constantly and consider themselves close. That bond formed during a period when one of them was quietly dealing with a very public storm of her own.

Nearly a year later, Amanda Seyfried has finally addressed that storm directly, the controversy that surrounded Sweeney’s American Eagle denim campaign from the previous summer. In a profile published this week in British GQ, Seyfried explained that the pair had a great time on the press tour together, even as she understood how difficult the moment must have been for her costar.

According to the magazine, Seyfried said she had heard Sweeney stand up for herself at times, while believing her costar still found herself caught between a rock and a hard place. Seyfried added that she deliberately avoided bringing the subject up unless Sweeney wanted to talk about it, choosing instead to offer comfort, laughter and cake rather than commentary.

The uproar traces back to July 2025, when American Eagle released a campaign built around the phrase Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans, a play on words that some critics felt referenced genetics and traditional beauty standards while others saw simple wordplay. That debate followed Sweeney through much of the ‘The Housemaid’ promotional run, even as she and Seyfried kept showing up together for premieres and interviews.

Sweeney herself mostly avoided the topic in real time before eventually telling People in December 2025 that she was honestly surprised by the reaction and did not support the views some people chose to connect to the campaign. She explained that her usual instinct had been to never respond to negative or positive press, but that staying silent on the issue had only widened the divide rather than closing it.

The two stars have stayed close since the film’s release, with Seyfried even joking that she expects to land at least a small cameo if a sequel to ‘The Housemaid’ comes together. Now that she has finally opened up about quietly supporting Sweeney instead of wading into the public debate, it feels like the right moment to ask fans of ‘The Housemaid’ how they think that kind of behind the scenes loyalty should look the next time a costar gets caught in an online firestorm.