Sydney Sweeney is one of the most popular young actresses who is probably at the top of every single casting director’s list. It’s hard to imagine that she’d have any difficulty now throwing her name in the hat of any film or TV production when it comes to filling the role of a leading lady. As a result of her sought-after talent, she purportedly has a venerable net worth to go with her success.
But according to a recent interview Sweeney had with Women’s Health, it wasn’t always this way for the young actress. She says that she went through several years of hearing “no” as a young actress before securing multiple high profile gigs in major productions, and that her family could barely afford to live “anywhere.” They lost a beloved home they had on a lake, and underwent bankruptcy and in order for her to help her folks make ends meet; Sweeney said that she took to babysitting, cleaning bathrooms in restaurants, and conducting tours at Universal Studios.
However, there are some folks who are stating that the last part of Sweeney’s rags-to-riches story just isn’t true.
Like TikToker Becca Murray (@thebeccamurray) who pointed out how Sweeney in subsequent interviews, like her appearance on Hot Ones, seems to get cagey and evasive when discussing the topic. Murray in her clip doubts Sweeney’s claim about her past experience being a tour guide at Universal Studios.
In a video with more than 300,000 views posted to her more than 400,000 TikTok followers, Murray explained her rationale.
@thebeccamurray welcome to the universal studios tour, my name is becca and i will be your guide today as we lift the veil of secrecy on some of hollywood’s hottest filming locations
♬ original sound – becca
Murray highlights how in her hot wing-eating interview, Sweeney briefly acknowledges her time at Universal before transitioning to another topic of conversation. The TikToker also goes on to state that it’s a particularly “weird” job for Sweeney to lie about having, and says that she, herself, worked as a tour guide at Universal Studios for seven years.
Her explanation of the position makes it seem more improbable that someone who was simply looking for a gig to get money in a hurry would be hired as a tour guide due to how involved of a process it is: “It was the majority of my 20s and there are so many things about that job but it is not an easy job to get. It’s not something you can just waltz in off the street and be like I would like a job please.”
She went on to say that “there’s an open call with hundreds of people, there is an audition, there is a memorization test, there is an interview, and then you have to get accepted into a class… It’s a whole bunch of people for three weeks of training, a written test, an oral test, and then you can get offered a job. OK, and even at that point you’re still just seasonal. It is not something that you can just walk in there and get.”
Murray also offered up a rejoinder to folks who argued that maybe Sweeney did, in fact, work as a tour guide on a seasonal basis and flew under the radar during her time there. However, the TikToker continued to cast doubt on Sweeney’s claim of working as a tour guide, stating that there were indeed folks who were “lifers” in the tour guide department at Universal Studios, and they would allegedly know every single person who earned a position as one in the park, due to how difficult of a process it is to be qualified for the gig.
Another big reason why Murray says that she highly doubts Sweeney was ever a tour guide at Universal Studios is that she claims park management loves to bill the job as gaining a “foot into the entertainment industry.” If Sweeney worked as a tour guide and then worked her way up from that position and ended up becoming a famous actress as a result, this would surely be a talking point the tour guide department would use in order to gain recruits to apply for the program, Murray claims.
“They claim it. They hold onto it, they use it as marketing they will not shut the [expletive] up about it. If Sydney Sweeney did even one tour, if she made it through all of the like getting the job doing, the class passing the tests, was sitting, in uniform, on a tram with her little mic… did one tour and then got a call from her agent and was like ‘Oh my God you guys I booked a job, bye.’ They would claim that. That would be lore. People would still be talking about it. Are you kidding? No, that’s… It’s such a weird thing to lie about!”
Another TikToker who goes by Trang, while not explicitly stating that she works for Universal Studios as a tour guide, doesn’t exactly make it hard for folks to piece together the park in question that she’s referring to in her video, echoes Murray’s claim.
And numerous other folks are talking about it too: The story has gained traction on Reddit in the r/popculturechat sub. In the comments section of the aforementioned upload containing a re-post of Murray’s video, another redditor believes that Sweeney was also caught lying about teaching herself Russian in high school, where they reference this snippet from a Wired interview, pointing out that she declined co-star Glen Powell’s request she say one word in Russian toward the camera.
The Daily Dot has reached out to a representative for Sweeney and to Universal Studios’ PR team about the viral rumor.
