Sydney Sweeney Finally Breaks Silence On American Eagle Jeans Drama

Sydney Sweeney is rolling into Toronto with a plan: talk about her new boxing drama, not the jeans drama. Ahead of her TIFF premiere, she made it clear the American Eagle backlash isn’t on the menu. The movie is.

"I am there to support my movie and the people involved in making it, and I’m not there to talk about jeans."

What she is actually promoting

Sweeney is premiering Christy at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5. She plays Christy Martin, the West Virginia fighter nicknamed the 'Coal Miner’s Daughter' who became the most prominent female boxer of the 1990s. Sweeney says she was surprised more people don’t already know Martin’s story, calling it both harrowing and inspiring.

The movie’s angle

Director David Michod isn’t making a straight-up sports biopic. He and co-writer Mirrah Foulkes were inspired after watching the documentary Untold: Deal With the Devil, and they shaped Christy to start like a scrappy underdog boxing story before pivoting into something darker and more emotionally wrenching. Michod also frames it as a global issue story: abusive relationships are widespread and too often end in partner homicide. In his view, that’s a global emergency, which gives the film weight beyond the ring.

Sweeney went all-in physically

This is where it gets a little inside baseball. Sweeney trained for months, put on 30 to 35 pounds for the role, and says she suffered concussions along the way. The fights you see? She says they’re real hits, thrown at full speed, because she didn’t want stunt doubles or pulled punches to break the illusion.

• TIFF date: September 5, Toronto International Film Festival
• Film: Christy, about 1990s boxing star Christy Martin
• Star: Sydney Sweeney as Martin
• Director: David Michod; co-writer: Mirrah Foulkes
• Inspiration: the documentary Untold: Deal With the Devil
• Preparation: months of training, 30-35 pounds gained, real contact in fight scenes, concussions reported
• Context: Sweeney won’t discuss the American Eagle campaign backlash at TIFF; she says she’s there to support the film and the people who made it
• Tone of the movie: starts as an underdog sports story, shifts into a more harrowing, deeply emotional drama anchored in real-world abuse dynamics

Bottom line

If you’re showing up for a press conference about jeans, wrong room. Sweeney is keeping the spotlight firmly on Christy and the team behind it, and she’s got the bruises to prove how far she went to tell the story.