Sydney Sweeney on Filming Nude Scenes: Everything She Has Said So Far

Sydney Sweeney has been remarkably candid about the realities of filming nude scenes over the years.

While her Euphoria breakout role has divided viewers over the years, she declared she is proud of her work in the hit HBO series.

"With The White Lotus, I felt like people were finally recognising the hard work I've been doing," she told The Independent's Ellie Harrison in a 2022 interview. "This is something that has bothered me for a while. I'm very proud of my work in Euphoria. I thought it was a great performance. But no one talks about it because I got naked."

Sweeney added, "I do The White Lotus and all of a sudden critics are paying attention. People are loving me. They're going, 'Oh my God, what's she doing next?' I was like, 'Did you not see that in Euphoria? Did you not see that in The Handmaid's Tale?'"

At the time, the Christy actress underscored the "stigma against actresses who get naked on screen."

"When a guy has a s-- scene or shows his body, he still wins awards and gets praise. But the moment a girl does it, it's completely different," she pointed out.

In the same candid interview, Sweeney revealed she found out the nude scenes of her Euphoria character, Cassie, circulated widely on social media when her younger brother was tagged in the posts.

"That was the most hurtful thing that anybody could do," she said. "What I do is completely separate from my family. My character is completely separate to me."

Sweeney also described seeing the scenes spread across the internet as "just so disrespectful and distressing."

"I don't think there is actually a coping mechanism to be honest. You just get used to it," she continued.

Nevertheless, Sweeney has credited Euphoria's set environment for making her feel comfortable.

"Sam [Levinson] is amazing," she told The Independent, adding, "There are moments where Cassie was supposed to be shirtless and I would tell Sam, 'I don't really think that's necessary here.' He was like, 'OK, we don't need it'. I've never felt like Sam has pushed it on me or was trying to get a nude scene into an HBO show. When I didn't want to do it, he didn't make me."

Still, not every project has been as seamless as Euphoria, leaving Sweeney wanting to go home and "scrub [herself] completely raw because [she feels] disgusting."

She attributed one particularly difficult experience to a director's poor communication and refusal to revise the script.

"I didn't feel comfortable with my cast mate or the crew, and I just didn't feel like my character would be doing it," she said without naming the director or the project in question. "That made me even more self-conscious. I didn't feel like I was able to speak up."

During a March 2022 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the Immaculate actress shared she forgot to give her relatives a heads-up about the provocative scenes on Euphoria when she invited them to the premiere.

"I was like, it's a Hollywood premiere, you gotta come!" she recalled. "We were all sitting next to each other, and like, giant screen, ginormous screen… I was on the floor."

When Ellen DeGeneres asked about her grandparents' reactions, Sweeney responded, "They said I have the best t--- in Hollywood."

Sweeney previously told The Telegraph her dad was "a little scarred" after she forgot to alert him about the scenes.

"I think he made it to the point where I was slammed down on the bed and he has refused to turn it back on since," she continued.

In September 2023, The Rolling Stones released the eye-popping music video for "Angry," which stars Sweeney in a scandalous leather costume while dancing in the backseat of a convertible.

While some claimed she was overly sexualized in the clip, Sweeney saw things differently.

"I felt hot. I picked my own outfit out of racks and racks of clothes. I felt so good in it," she told Glamour UK. "One of the questions I get is, 'Are you a feminist?' I find empowerment through embracing the body that I have."

She explained, "That's s--- and strong, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I'm in a Rolling Stones video. How cool and iconic is that? I felt so good. All the moves, everything I was doing was all freestyle. I mean, who else gets to roll around on the top of a convertible driving down Sunset Boulevard with police escorts? It's the cool things in this career that I had no idea I'd get to do."

While appearing on Variety's Actors on Actors series with Christina Ricci, Sweeney expressed how fortunate she feels because of the industry's handling of intimate scenes nowadays.

Per the Madame Webb actress, she has never felt uncomfortable doing s-- scenes on Euphoria, adding she became "very confident with [her] body through Cassie."

Sweeney has no trouble posing nude.

In a June 2025 interview, she expressed she feels at ease being naked on camera for Euphoria.

"I think that the female body is a very powerful thing," she highlighted. "And I'm telling my character's story, so I owe it to them to tell it well and to do what needs to be done."

It echoed comments she made to Teen Vogue in 2022 about how baring her skin "is important to the storyline and the character."

"There's a purpose to what that character is going through. That's the character. We all get naked in real life. We show this character's life and what they're going through. [My character] Cassie's body is a different form of communication for her," she continued.

Sweeney also praised Levinson for creating a safe space on set: "It was more how respectful Sam is and how incredible of a director he is, that he would never make me do something I didn't feel comfortable with."

Despite feeling safe on set, she said the media often sexualized her.

"The viewer's perception of the type of characters that I do play is challenging," she told host Julia Cunningham in a sit-down with Sirius XM in November 2025.

"Do you think that it was because of Euphoria that every role then became 'she's being sexualized?'" Cunningham asked, to which she responded, "Yes, I think the casting was such a big pop culture-type character... and [it became the] zeitgeist of the generation."

As her nude scenes on Euphoria have consistently prompted differing opinions, she condemned the double standard that exists in Hollywood.

"I don't think as many people took me seriously in Euphoria because I took my shirt off," she said, later adding, "There's such a double standard. I really hope I can have a little part in changing that."

Sweeney said she is "so disconnected" from her nude scenes that watching them feels like she is observing another person.

"When I get tagged in Cassie's or The Voyeurs' Pippa's nudes, it feels like me looking at their nudes, not Sydney's nudes," she shared. "When you film one of these scenes, it is so technical and so not romantic. There are people staring at you, there's pads between you, there's n------ covers and weird sticker thongs all up in your b---."

As criticism came barging back following the release of Euphoria Season 3, Sweeney fired back at critics and justified her role.

"It's called… acting," she wrote on Instagram, accompanied by a series of photos showing her in provocative outfits from the show's set.

In an interview with The New York Times, Levinson revealed Sweeney told him to keep the nude scenes in Season 3 when he was thinking about leaving them out.

“Well, it's funny. When I first wrote it, I was like, 'Maybe we shoot all of this and we don't have any nudity. Maybe there's ways to shoot around certain things?'" the Euphoria creator said. "And she looked at me and she was like, 'Are you kidding? I'm playing an OnlyFans model. You're telling me you're going to, like, skirt around it?' And I was like, 'Yeah, OK, that's a fair point.'"

Levinson was also asked about complaints that the show included unnecessary nude scenes in its first two seasons, especially when the story focused on high school students.

"From the script, you get a sense of what the role requires," he said. "Even when you go up to audition, let's use the role of Cassie, you know the role requires a certain amount of nudity. Are you comfortable? If they're comfortable, they get the role, then the next layer is the intimacy coordinator. I think it's a SAG rule that if an actor then says, after getting cast, 'Actually, I don't want to do that,' we can't force them to do a scene."

Above all, Levinson stressed that protecting the cast is his top priority.