Sydney Sweeney’s Superfan Dream Becomes The Housemaid — And She Delivers
Sydney Sweeney scorches in The Housemaid, an R-rated turn drawing raves from critics and audiences worldwide — and she scored an extra thrill on set when a childhood fandom sprang to life around her. For the rising star, filming doubled as a dream-come-true fan moment.
Sometimes the best part of a movie gig is the movie. Sometimes it is getting to show up to work and realize you are acting opposite the person you grew up obsessed with. For Sydney Sweeney on The Housemaid, it is both.
Sweeney went to work with her childhood favorite
The R-rated, erotic psychological thriller has Sweeney riding a wave of praise from critics and audiences, but she also got a very personal bonus on set: Amanda Seyfried. Sweeney has been a fan since she was a kid, to the point she literally memorized Mamma Mia, and she called working with Seyfried a dream come true. In her words to EW, the fun twist was getting to watch Seyfried take the unhinged role for once while Sweeney played the grounding perspective:
"I always looked at Millie as the eyes of the audience."
Sweeney usually gets cast as the character coming off the rails, so slipping into the audience-surrogate lane was new for her. She says Seyfried flat-out killed it, bringing something fresh to every take and blowing her away on the regular.
What the movie is actually doing
Sweeney plays Millie, a young woman trying to start over. Seyfried is Nina, a wealthy wife and mom who hires Millie as a live-in housemaid. It looks like a dream job until it doesn’t: Nina shifts from oddly demanding to fully unglued, and Millie starts worrying for her own safety. That dynamic is the engine of the movie.
The book fan wants more
Sweeney is not just a Seyfried fan; she is also a big fan of Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid books the movie adapts. Talking to People, she said she would love to come back as Millie if sequels happen. She clearly loves playing her: spicy, a fighter, knows what she believes, stands up for it. And yes, Sweeney’s very into stories that embrace female rage.
- What is left to adapt: The Housemaid’s Secret (2023) and The Housemaid Is Watching (2024), plus the short story The Housemaid’s Wedding, which takes place between those two.
On set: keeping Sweeney off balance (on purpose)
This is one of those process details worth clocking: Seyfried and director Paul Feig leaned into Nina’s unpredictability. They had the time to play, tried new ideas, and Feig would drop fresh notes between takes specifically to switch things up. The goal was to keep Sweeney guessing in the moment so the reactions stayed live and a little dangerous. By Seyfried’s account, they made each other laugh a lot, and those curveballs kept the scenes energized. It sounds like a blast, and you can feel that looseness in the finished movie.
How it is landing right now
The Housemaid (2025), directed by Paul Feig, is connecting: as of now, it sits at 6.8/10 on IMDb, 75% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, and 92% on the audience side. It is currently playing in U.S. theaters if you want to see Sweeney and Seyfried go toe-to-toe before it hits streaming.