lives

Sydney Sweeney wants to make films that will “impact and hopefully save people’s lives”, she has told the BBC.

The 28-year-old US actor has this year appeared in psychological thriller The Housemaid and boxing biopic Christy, which both address issues around domestic violence.

Sweeney calls the topic “prevalent” and says she takes a “lot of care” when playing these types of roles.

“Being able to have a film that’s on a more commercial level talk about a very difficult topic is important,” she adds.

Sweeney is currently starring as Millie Calloway in The Housemaid, which is based on the 2022 novel of the same name by Freida McFadden.

The novel is an international bestseller and has generated a large following, especially among the reading community on TikTok.

Sweeney says she is “a huge fan of the book” and that she “loved all the characters”.

“I love complex, juicy, crazy, twisted stories. This is a dream project,” she adds.

The film also features Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar, as Nina and Andrew Winchester, who employ Sweeney’s character in their home.

Seyfried and Sweeney were chosen to play the two female leads in The Housemaid because of their physical resemblances, but Seyfried says the similarities do not end there.

“There’s a similarity between us that is uncanny, and it’s really fun to work with people [who] are doing life in a similar way, have similar ideals about the job and life,” she tells the BBC.

Sweeney also says the pair have developed a “dynamic” where they “can enjoy being around” each other – and their relationship means they can “go to these crazy places and discover so much more within your character”.

Seyfried’s character Nina grapples with complex mental health issues throughout the film, which at times make it a difficult watch.

“You have to play it as realistic as possible because it needs to reflect real life,” she says.

The Housemaid has been compared to domestic thrillers of the 1990s, like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct. But it has a markedly modern twist with the physical and mental abuse plot lines in the film.

Seyfried, who is known for her roles in Mamma Mia! and Mean Girls, believes the cast “nailed getting the tone right” and hopes that despite the movie being entertainment, that people “come out with a better understanding of domestic violence” and “broaden their horizons”.

She adds that this is “especially” true for “people who haven’t thankfully had to deal with it”.

This is echoed by director Paul Feig, who admits he was “nervous” about handling the subject sensitively.

“I made sure there wasn’t any physical abuse, that it was more psychological abuse,” he says.

Domestic abuse in film has become a hot topic for Hollywood, sparked by the promotional tour for 2024 film It Ends With Us, which was criticised by some for packaging it as a romantic story rather than one of abuse.

Sklenar, who appears in both The Housemaid and It Ends With Us, says it is “challenging” to take on the role of an abuser.

He describes his characters – Andrew Winchester in The Housemaid and Atlas Corrigan in It Ends With Us – as “polar opposites”.

“When it comes to acting, you can try all you want, but ultimately sometimes it just affects you,” he says.

“It’s intense and it’s ultimately going to affect you in certain ways.”

The film has received mostly positive reviews, including four stars from the Guardian, which said Feig and his cast “deliver with terrific gusto; this is an innocent holiday treat”.

The reception will be welcome for Sweeney after being at the centre of much drama and discussion in 2025.

Her American Eagle jeans ads drew criticism for raising issues over race and beauty standards. Sweeney told People Magazine earlier this month she was “against hate and divisiveness” and had been surprised by reaction to the campaign.

And her career was under scrutiny after a string of box office flops – but The Housemaid opened with a healthy $19m (£14m) in North America last weekend.

That’s no surprise given that the original novel was a huge hit, selling more than 1.6 million copies worldwide.

Two sequels have also been published, meaning further film adaptations could be on the cards.

Feig, whose previous films include Bridesmaids and The Heat, believes novels will become an even more fertile source of material for Hollywood because “studios always want something that is a known quality” to “justify their ability to put a lot of money” into the project.

But he says he tries not to let books with a huge audience and fanbase dictate what projects he makes, because “there are plenty of books that are really popular that just don’t work as movies”.

Feig adds that it has been “fun” to work with Rebecca Sonnenshine’s adapted screenplay for The Housemaid, but that he has “restored” some parts of the book that “readers really would miss if they weren’t in there”.

There is also an “extra ending that’s not in the book”, he says, “so readers can get something new that they didn’t expect”.

The Housemaid is now showing in UK cinemas.

Infidelity, divorce, even “soft-swinging” – not words traditionally associated with Christianity, but just some of the themes in the hit US reality show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

The TV series follows a group of female influencers in Utah – the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) – as they deal with friendship fall-outs, romantic problems, and their relationship with their faith.

“These Latter-day Saints are no angels,” last month’s trailer for season three declared, setting the tone for what was to come. The show became the most-watched unscripted season premiere of 2024 on Hulu and continues to attract millions of global viewers there and on Disney+.

And the cast of women, who previously gained notoriety on TikTok under their “MomTok” banner, have gained scores of social media followers.

But do Mormons living in the UK think the show gives a fair portrayal of their religion? BBC News has spoken to some, many of whom prefer to be referred to as members of the Latter-day Saints rather than Mormons.

“We’re normal people,” Ben, a podcast producer who lives near Burnley, says.

“So there is still infidelity, there are still extramarital affairs, probably at a significantly lower percentage because we are intentionally trying not to do that. But those things still happen.”

The show is appointment viewing for Ben’s wife Olivia, who he says “loves it” – having put the new season in their calendar so she didn’t miss it.

When the first series aired last year, Ben, 27, feels there was “hesitancy” in the LDS community about it. Now, he says people are mostly supportive of the women on the programme and wouldn’t say they are “embarrassed” by them – “because we’re not”.

“In the UK, if you spend a week with a Latter-day Saint family, it will probably be generally quite boring and average,” he says.

Ben and Olivia are among the approximately 185,000 LDS members in the UK. The church was founded by Joseph Smith in the US in 1830, who said he received a revelation from God, which he translated to become the Book of Mormon.

Members of the LDS believe the Book is the word of God, like the Bible. Unlike other branches of Christianity, members do not believe Jesus is himself God, rather that they are separate beings.

They are perhaps best known for their missionary tradition, where every year thousands of young Mormons are sent by the LDS to different locations around the world to recruit others to the religion.

In 1837 the first missionaries from the newly founded LDS arrived in the UK in Preston, Lancashire – now home to Europe’s largest Mormon temple. Earlier this year, plans to expand the temple, where Ben and Olivia sometimes worship, were approved by councillors.

In Buckinghamshire, Traci, 57, tells BBC News after growing up in the LDS, she moved away from the faith aged 17 when her mother died. About a decade later, pregnant with twins, she says she prayed every night, scared and asking for help. When her sons were born, and missionaries knocked on the door, she says she “felt the Holy Ghost’s presence”.

Since then, she’s been a practising member of the LDS – which, among other things, means abiding by a health code that prohibits drinking tea, coffee and alcohol, and eating meat sparingly.

Traci, a psychotherapist based in Olney, decided not to watch the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, but from what she’s been told about it, says “it’s not representative of the women” she knows in the LDS. “It’s not the way that they live their life.”

She says she understands “sometimes people do have a curiosity about members of our church, they do want to know what makes us tick”, but adds: “Sometimes I worry, how are we being represented? How do you see us?”

One of the major themes of the TV show is the pressure the women feel in their family lives. Jessi, a woman in the show whose storyline revolves around an emotional affair she had, says avoiding to deal with issues in her marriage contributed to infidelity – and blamed Utah’s Mormonism for creating “a lot of pressure to have the perfect relationship, the perfect family and everything’s great”.

Back in the UK, we also spoke to Ben and Olivia’s friend Ashlyn who went to university in Utah and now lives in Burnley with her husband Joe, and their nine-month-old son.

She says the show is “a really accurate representation of the church in Utah, and culturally what Utah looks like, where belief meets cultural practices”.

The sheer number of Mormons there means that pressure to have a family comes not just from the Church, but from “everybody that you interact with”, Ashlyn, 25, adds.

“That pressure is very real. A lot of us call it the Utah bubble.”

But she says it’s not the same in the UK. She describes the show’s US cast as “probably more culturally members” of the LDS, rather than devout believers.

Ashlyn describes her experiences of the LDS as encouraging, rather than pressuring. “Some people view a lot of the commandments, and what people might label ‘rules’, as very confining and almost like there’s all these gates holding me in,” Ashlyn says, “whereas for us, it’s viewed a little bit more as safety. It helps direct us in the right way.”

And so-called “soft swinging”, one of the show’s scandals, would “definitely” be “discouraged” by the Church, she says.

Influencer Taylor Frankie Paul was at the centre of the story in series one of the show, when she described her and her then-husband as being sexually intimate – but stopping short of “going all the way” – with two other couples at various parties.

Ashlyn explains how in the LDS, “we have something called the law of chastity that says we should really save sexual relations within our marriages”.

She says her lifestyle in Burnley is “very family-centered, very healthy, trying to focus on going to church on Sunday, serving others, being a really good example to others, and helping in the community”.

Ashlyn adds: “I don’t think it would be as entertaining if The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was actually just them bringing cookies to their neighbours and just living very wholesome family lives.”

Another theme in the show centres on Layla, a black member of the LDS, who stops attending because she says the Church didn’t “resonate” with her any more as a person of colour, having converted to LDS and moved to Utah when she was 16.

“There is an old scripture in the Book of Mormon that states that black skin is a curse. It’s something that I am aware of now that I wasn’t aware of when I first converted,” she says in the latest series.

In 2013 the LDS “disavowed” those teachings, and now believes “everyone is an equal child of God regardless of race”.

BBC News spoke to Naomi, a ‘Young Women’s President’ in her local congregation in London, meaning she looks after girls between the ages of 12 and 18 in her area. She told us how as “a black female”, she hopes the children “can see me and my example and know what’s possible”.

Naomi says she hasn’t “had any negative experiences” in the Church based on her race, and says the teachings “have been denounced”.

The members of the LDS in Britain we spoke to had mixed opinions on whether The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives represents their way of life, with most agreeing that parts of it were exaggerated depictions.

Ahead of the first series of the show last year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the UK released a statement titled, “When entertainment media distorts faith”.

While it didn’t name the show, it said: “A number of recent productions depict lifestyles and practices blatantly inconsistent with the teachings of the Church.

“We understand the fascination some in the media have with the Church, but regret that portrayals often rely on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly and fully reflect the lives of our Church members or the sacred beliefs that they hold dear.”

Naomi, who is a TV producer working on reality shows, knows all too well that it’s a classic of the genre that “things are going to be heightened, things are going to be produced to get the desired effect”.

“I’m very aware of that.”