While Sydney Sweeney has taken over recent headlines (and presumably NSFW daydream scenarios) in connection with selling her bathwater in a soap, I’m personally more invested in seeing the actress mop the floor with opposing boxers in the upcoming 2025 movie about boxing icon Christy Martin. It’s arguably the most athletic role yet for the busy actress, and she opened up about the big gains she experienced between first signing on for the role in early 2024 through to production wrapping in November.
Speaking with W about the huge moves her career has taken in the three years since her HBO breakout series last aired — Euphoria Season 3 is on the way, but not until 2026 — Sweeney talked about going into a specific training mode in the timeframe before filming started, and how much she enjoyed that tempo change. In her words:
I loved it. I came onboard to play Christy, and I had about three and a half months of training. I started eating. I weight-trained in the morning for an hour, kickboxed midday for about two hours, and then weight-trained again at night for an hour.
The White Lotus and Immaculate isn’t the most intimidating, at least not in a way that trained fighters would fear. But it sounds like she enjoyed bulking up during the training process, during which she gained around 30 pounds, even if it made her more buxom and booty-ful along the way. As she put it:
first look showing off Sweeney’s big arms. So it’s unknown exactly when audiences will first get to see her going toe to toe with other boxers on Martin’s awe-inspiring journey to becoming the most prolific and prominent female boxer to date, as well as the first of that distinction honored in the Boxing Hall of Fame.
Just don’t pay too much attention to Sweeney’s boobs or butt in the trailer, or she’ll put you down for the count.
The Biopic’s Director On Sydney Sweeney’s Dedication To The Role
Director David Michôd, perhaps best known for 2010’s Animal Kingdom and 2014’s The Rover, talked about Christy Martin’s impressive career and spoke highly of Sydney Sweeney’s unending positivity throughout the production, despite any and all challenges that were presented. As he put it:
Martin put female boxing on the map in the mid-’90s. She was the first woman fighter on the cover of Sports Illustrated and fought on the Mike Tyson undercard. Her husband was also her trainer, and then, after her success, he tried to murder her. Our film is a wild mix of inspiring underdog sports-world story and personal saga. Sydney trained her butt off to play the part. The beauty of Sydney is that she turned up to work every day with her tail wagging, ready to go. No matter how tough it was, she was like a ray of sunshine.
As impressive as it is that Sweeney made all those gains to play Christy Martin, it’s just as impressive that she necessarily shed the extra weight in the seven weeks between the biopic’s end date and the start of her next project. I’d have to chop off an entire limb, I think.
David Michôd said he was shocked to speak with Sweeney via FaceTime in the more recent past, saying she was in the makeup truck for Euphoria and was “stunned” that she’d gone from her Martin look to something “so glamorous” for the HBO series.
Fans won’t be missing Sydney Sweeney on the big or small screen for long in the future. She has Apple TV+’s dramatic thriller Echo Valley coming out on June 13, while Paul Feig’s adaptation of The Housemaid is set for a Christmas Day release. Beyond that, there’s the aforementioned third season of HBO’s Euphoria, Sweeney’s planned portrayal of Kim Novak in Scandalous!, her Barbarella movie, the upcoming video game adaptation for Split Fiction and even more.