In one of her new ads for the peer-to-peer sports betting platform Novig, actress Sydney Sweeney — wearing nothing but underwear and a football placed suggestively across her bare chest — turns her head toward the camera and looks down the barrel of the lens. Her hollow stare precedes an even more soulless bit of ad copy, falling out from between her pursed lips with a heavy thunk: “It’s gamedaaayyyyyyyy.”
Sweeney delivers this solitary line with such a (typically) wooden energy that I’m not even convinced she believes it’s gameday, sort of like when a musician puts out a Christmas album in November, and one has to quiet the knowledge that it was most certainly recorded in July. Her voice almost seems to lilt up at the end, as if she’s asking a question. “It’s gameday?” For just a flash of a moment, Sweeney’s contrived tone belies her body’s projected confidence. The knowledge of her intentions, and which unsavory games she’s playing, is visibly splayed across her face and audible in her voice. Then she smiles just a little wider, covering up the crack in the facade.
