Sydney Sweeney takes swipe at superhero flop Madame Web in SNL opening monologue

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Sydney Sweeney made a dig at her role in critical flop Madame Web during her opening monologue on Saturday Night Live.

The actor, 26, plays Julia Carpenter, aka Spider-Woman, in the panned superhero film, which was released last month to widespread derision from reviewers and audiences alike.

As she introduced herself to SNL yesterday evening (2 March), Sweeney namechecked some of her more popular previous roles before taking a quick shot at the maligned movie.

“You might have seen me in Anyone But You or Euphoria,” she said, before adding: “ You definitely did not see me in ‘Madame Web.”

In a one star review, The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey described Madame Web as “an $80m (£63m) film with the quality of an unlicensed superhero painted on the side of a carnival ride”, adding that it felt “desperate and seemed embarrassed of itself”.

Sweeney is not the only actor to poke fun at the project: her co-star Dakota Johnson, who plays the titular character, also used her SNL monologue to joke about the film back in January, describing it as “like if AI generated your boyfriend’s perfect movie”.

Johnson also previously admitted that she had concerns while filming, as she had never previously acted using a blue screen for special effects.

“I’ve never really done a movie where you are on a blue screen, and there’s fake explosions going off, and someone’s going, ‘Explosion!’ and you act like there’s an explosion,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “That to me was absolutely psychotic. I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is going to be good at all! I hope that I did an OK job!’”

During her SNL monologue, Sweeney went on to joke that she was excited for the late night show’s viewers to “get to know the real me”, as they might only know her as “the girl on TV who screams, cries and has sex. Sometimes it’s all three at the same time”.

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The White Lotus star also took the opportunity to make light of rumours of a romance between her and her Anything But You co-star Glen Powell, after fans had speculated about their relationship. She described the rumours as “obviously not true”, telling the audience that she co-produced Anything But You with her fiancé, before the camera playfully cut to a smiling Powell, who was sitting in the studio.

Sweeney’s SNL episode also featured a performance from Grammy winner Kacey Musgraves, who sung new tracks “Deeper Well” and “Too Good to be True”.