Throughout the press run for their rom-com Anyone But You, rumors swirled that co-stars Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney were more than just co-stars. (After all, look at them on red carpets. Their chemistry is palpable.) The film landed on Netflix yesterday, and Powell admitted, per USA Today, that the persistent affair rumors did nothing but help sell tickets to Anyone But You. (While Powell is single, Sweeney is engaged to Jonathan Davino.)
“The two things that you have to sell a rom-com are fun and chemistry,” Powell told The New York Times. “Sydney and I have a ton of fun together, and we have a ton of effortless chemistry. That’s people wanting what’s on the screen off the screen, and sometimes you just have to lean into it a bit—and it worked wonderfully.”
Anyone But You is loosely adapted from William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and in the film, Powell and Sweeney “play ex-flames who begrudgingly reconnect at a wedding in Australia,” USA Today writes. The film went on to cross the $200 million mark in global ticket sales and became the highest-grossing R-rated romantic comedy since Bridget Jones’s Baby in 2016, Variety reports.
“The film’s success can be attributed, in part, to Sony’s social media marketing efforts and the leading couple stoking rumors and making headlines with steamy photos and flirty comments, which sparked speculation about a romance on set,” USA Today reports. “Both actors repeatedly denied the rumors.”
But they continue to play into them, like last month, when Sweeney hosted Saturday Night Live. During her opening monologue, she addressed the “craziest rumor” that she and Powell’s romance was more than what was seen onscreen. “That’s obviously not true,” Sweeney said, adding that her fiancé was at SNL to support her—“only to feign surprise as the camera cut to Powell sitting in the audience,” USA Today reports.
“No, that’s not my fiancé,” Sweeney said. “He’s in my dressing room!”
Sweeney also spoke to The New York Times, telling the outlet that, as far as marketing went for Anyone But You, she “was on every call. I was in text group chats. I was probably keeping everybody over at Sony marketing and distribution awake at night because I couldn’t stop with ideas.”
Including, apparently, stoking the flame of a rumored affair that, alas, wasn’t. Powell himself said of Sweeney that “Sydney is very smart”—and he’s not wrong. Did we just get played? Maybe.
