Sydney Sweeney on playing a non-fictional character in ‘Reality’

Sydney Sweeney is playing a new kind of character in her upcoming movie ‘Reality’.

The 25-year-old actress is taking on the mantle of playing a real-life person, straying from her previous roles in ‘White Lotus’ and ‘Euphoria’.

In the movie, she plays Reality Winner, a former National Security Agency employee who served time in prison for leaking classified documents.

On the shift in character roles, Sweeney offers some insight into how she approached the character and how she had to adapt to staying true to the real person she plays.

How Sweeney approached playing Reality

“I’ve always approached my characters as living, breathing human beings that live on a screen, and I build their life from the day they’re born to the first page of the script,” Sweeney told People.

“I’ve always had such creative freedom with that, where I get to truly just create their entire life and their memories and their experiences, and it’s really fun,” she said, referring to her previous roles as Olivia Mossbacher in ‘White Lotus’ Season 1 and as Cassie Howard in ‘Euphoria’.

“But Reality is a real person who already has all of those memories and those experiences and those relationships that I wanted to learn and tap into and try and get all of that information that I possibly could, so that I could then put it into the same process that I have, but with the groundwork of a real person and then bring it to the screen,” she explained.

She explains that both acting and filming for ‘Reality’ was an entirely different experience than her TV roles, saying, “I don’t know if I can even equate the differences, because the TV world is very different from the movie world, and Reality is just so different from Cassie or Olivia.

“Just the whole process, everything is completely different.”

What is ‘Reality’ about?

‘Reality’ follows the events leading up to the arrest and interrogation of Reality Winner, a former Air Force member, and NSA translator who leaked classified documents to the media.

The document she leaked was a report on the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

‘Reality’ is set to be released on May 29, on HBO at 10:00 P.M. ET/PT, and will also be available to stream on Max.