Halsey on Learning From Sydney Sweeney on ‘Americana' and Creating Her Own New Series: 'Really Cool to Be Part of a Project I Don't Face'
Americana — a modern western from writer-director Tony Tost which follows several people as their lives violently intertwine while fighting over an expensive Native American ghost shirt— was shot in 2022, premiered at SXSW in 2023 and is finally heading to this big screen this month.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Trump Swoons Over Sydney Sweeney Amid Reports That She's a Republican
American Eagle Responds to Sydney Sweeney Jeans Campaign Amid Controversy
JD Vance Mocks Protests of Sydney Sweeney's Jeans Ad: "They Can't Help But Freak Out"
'I'd been waiting a really long time, I'd been really cautiously picky about what I was going to do for my first project for getting into this world, into this space,' Halsey told The Hollywood Reporter at the film's Los Angeles premiere on Sunday. 'Tony reached out and he was so personable and so talented and I just really connected with the script and the character. Little did I know we were going to be making it during COVID, which was a crazy experience. And from the moment I read the script until we started shooting, I got pregnant, had a whole pregnancy, gave birth to my son, had my son on set with me, and without giving anything away, it's really serendipitous to [her character] Mandy's arc in the film.'
The film also stars Sydney Sweeney — who walked the carpet in her first public appearance following her American Eagle controversy — Paul Walter Hauser, Simon Rex, Eric Dane and Zahn McClarnon. It marks a reunion for Halsey and Sweeney, after the Euphoria star appeared in Halsey's 2019 music video for her song 'Graveyard.'
'We were actually hanging out a bunch during COVID, so when I got the call she was doing the movie we had like just gone hiking a few days before, so it was like, 'Oh cool, I'll see you there,'' Halsey recalled. 'It was just really great to have someone to learn from, to ask questions to — the stupid questions you don't think of. It was my first time on a movie set in a real way; just being like 'Who do I look at? Who do I listen to? What's the cool code words I don't know, the actor lingo?' So having someone to ask the stupid questions to was great.'
Next up, Halsey is making another pivot and developing series Bloodlust for Amazon, serving as creator, writer and EP. The dark comedy series has also enlisted MaXXXine filmmaker Ti West to direct and executive produce.
'I started the pilot a few years ago and Amazon wanted it and they took it and now we're getting it on the road. There's not so much that I can say but it's really cool to be a part of a project that I don't face. It's quite relieving,' Halsey explained, confirming that she will not appear on screen in the show. 'Just behind the scenes, just the puppet master,' she noted, celebrating, 'I don't have to do my makeup.'
Americana hits theaters Aug. 15.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
The 25 Best U.S. Film Schools in 2025
The 40 Greatest Needle Drops in Film History
The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Yahoo Fantasy now has a new home on YouTube
We'd like to introduce you to our brand-new YouTube channel: @YahooFantasyFootball! This is the official home of Yahoo Fantasy Football on YouTube and your all-in-one hub for dominating the fantasy football season. This dedicated space was built to give you everything you need on your journey to a championship. Here's what you can expect on the Yahoo Fantasy Football YouTube channel: Daily clips with rankings, debates, waiver advice, and bold calls Live streams that actually help you win your league Player breakdowns, mock drafts, and matchup talk Shorts, reactions, and more ways to stay plugged in Fantasy Q&A every Friday afternoon during the season Now all the fantasy content you want is on the Yahoo Fantasy Football channel. Your favorite shows like Yahoo Fantasy Forecast, which is now streaming live Sunday-Thursday at 5pm ET, and Fantasy Football Live will be there, so you have one place to catch all the action! That's right, no more digging — every show, every stream, every breakdown, all in one spot. Where to find it: YouTube → @YahooFantasyFootball What to do: Subscribe so you don't miss what's next Turn on alerts to catch the live shows Drop a comment and tell us what you want more of Share it with your league If you care about fantasy football, this is where you should be. @YahooFantasyFootball marks day 7 of our 28 Days of Fantasy. Follow it all here.
The Verge
30 minutes ago
- The Verge
Sex is getting scrubbed from the internet, but a billionaire can sell you AI nudes
In the fascinating new reality of the internet, teen girls can't learn about periods on Reddit and indie artists can't sell smutty games on but a military contractor will make you nonconsensual deepfakes of Taylor Swift taking her top off for $30 a month. Early Tuesday, Elon Musk's xAI launched a new image and video generator called Grok Imagine with a 'spicy' mode whose output ranges from suggestive gestures to nudity. Because Grok Imagine also has no perceptible guardrails against creating images of real people, that means you can essentially generate softcore pornography of anyone who's famous enough for Grok to recreate (although, pragmatically, it appears to mainly produce seriously NSFW output for women). Musk bragged that more than 34 million images were generated within a day of launching operations. But the real coup is demonstrating that xAI can ignore pressure to keep adult content off its services while helping users create something that's widely reviled, thanks to legal gaps and political leverage that no other company has. xAI's video feature — which debuted around the same time as a romantic chatbot companion named Valentine — seems from one angle strikingly weird, because it's being released during a period where sex (down to the word itself) is being pushed to the margins of the internet. Late last month, the UK started enforcing age-gating rules that required X and other services to block sexual or otherwise 'harmful' content for users under 18. Around the same time, an activist group called Collective Shout successfully pressured Steam and to crack down on adult games and other media, leading in particular to mass-delist any NSFW uploads. Deepfake porn of real people is a form of nonconsensual intimate imagery, which is illegal to intentionally publish in the US under the Take It Down Act, signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year. In a statement published Thursday, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) called Grok's feature 'part of a growing problem of image-based sexual abuse' and quipped that Grok clearly 'didn't get the memo' about the new law. But according to Mary Anne Franks, a professor at George Washington University Law School and president of the nonprofit Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), there's 'little danger of Grok facing any kind of liability' under the Take It Down Act. 'The criminal provision requires 'publication,' which, while unfortunately not defined in the statute, suggests making content available to more than one person,' Franks says. 'If Grok only makes the videos viewable to the person who uses the tool, that wouldn't seem to suffice.' Regulators have failed to enforce laws against big companies even when they apply Grok also likely isn't required to remove the images under the Take It Down Act's takedown provision — despite that rule being so worryingly broad that it threatens most social media services. 'I don't think Grok — or at least this particular Grok tool — even qualifies as a 'covered platform,' because the definition of covered platform requires that it 'primarily provides a forum for user-generated content,'' she says. 'AI-generated content often involves user inputs, but the actual content is, as the term indicates, generated by AI.' The takedown provision is also designed to work through people flagging content, and Grok doesn't publicly post the images where other users can see them — it just makes them incredibly easy to create (and almost inevitably post to social media) at a large scale. Franks and the CCRI called out the limited definition of a 'covered platform' as a problem for other reasons months ago. It's one of several ways the Take It Down Act fails to serve people impacted by nonconsensual intimate imagery while posing a risk to web platforms acting in good faith. It might not even stop Grok from posting lewd AI-modified images of real people publicly, Franks told Spitfire News in June, in part because there are open questions about whether Grok is a 'person' impacted by the law. These kinds of failures are a running theme in internet regulation that's ostensibly supposed to crack down on harmful or inappropriate content; the UK's mandate, for instance, has made it harder to run independent forums while still being fairly easy for kids to get around. Compounding this problem, particularly in the US, regulatory agencies have failed to impose meaningful consequences for all kinds of rulebreaking by powerful companies, including Musk's many businesses. Trump has given Musk-owned companies an almost total pass for bad conduct, and even after formally leaving his powerful position at the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk likely maintains tremendous leverage over regulatory agencies like the FTC. (xAI just got a contract of up to $200 million with the Department of Defense.) So even if xAI were violating the Take It Down Act, it probably wouldn't face investigation. Beyond the government, there are layers of gatekeepers that dictate what is acceptable on platforms, and they often take a dim view of sex. Apple, for instance, has pushed Discord, Reddit, Tumblr, and other platforms to censor NSFW material with varying levels of success. Steam and reevaluated adult content under threat of losing relationships with payment processors and banks, which have previously put the screws on platforms like OnlyFans and Pornhub. In some cases, like Pornhub's, this pressure is the result of platforms allowing unambiguously harmful and illegal uploads. But Apple and payment processors don't appear to maintain hard-line, evenly enforced policies. Their enforcement seems to depend significantly on public pressure balanced against how much power the target has, and despite his falling out with Trump, virtually nobody in business has more political power than Musk. Apple and Musk have repeatedly clashed over Apple's policies, and Apple has mostly held firm on things like its fee structure, but it's apparently backed down on smaller issues, including returning its advertisements to X after pulling them from the Nazi-infested platform. Apple has banned smaller apps for making AI-generated nudes of real people. Will it exert that kind of pressure on Grok, whose video service launched exclusively on iOS? Apple didn't respond to a request for comment, but don't hold your breath. Grok's new feature is harmful for people who can now easily have nonconsensual nudes made of them on a major AI service, but it also demonstrates how hollow the promise of a 'safer' internet is proving. Small-time platforms face pressure to remove consensually recorded or entirely fictional media made by human beings, while a company run by a billionaire can make money off something that's in some circumstances outright illegal. If you're online in 2025, nothing is about sex, including sex — which, per usual, is about power. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Adi Robertson Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Analysis Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Policy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Report Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Speech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All xAI
Forbes
30 minutes ago
- Forbes
Black Sabbath's Biggest Hit Surges To New Highs On Multiple Billboard Charts
This week in America, Black Sabbath has four songs on the Billboard charts. All of them appear on multiple tallies, and each one climbs to a new high point on at least one or two lists as consumption of everything connected to the late rocker surges, with listeners celebrating his life and legacy weeks after his death was announced. 'Paranoid' Leads Black Sabbath's Chart Success One tune, "Paranoid," has stood out for decades as Black Sabbath's most famous. This week, it not only appears on the most Billboard tallies, but also reaches never-before-seen peaks on more rankings than any of the group's other singles in what has become a huge frame for the cut. Six New Peaks for 'Paranoid' "Paranoid" lives on half a dozen Billboard charts this week, including some focused on consumption in the U.S., general listening around the world, and streaming activity. The Black Sabbath smash rises to a newly-established high on six charts at once. The tune also keeps at its all-time best placement of No. 5 on the Hard Rock Digital Song Sales ranking and debuts at No. 43 on the Streaming Songs tally, earning the band its first-ever appearance on that list. Global Rankings Show 'Paranoid' Surging Worldwide Looking worldwide, "Paranoid" jumps to new highs on both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. The track debuted just last week, and in its second frame, surges to No. 25 on the all-encompassing ranking and No. 32 on the list that excludes all sales and streaming numbers from American listeners. 'Paranoid' Breaks Into Top 10 on Multiple Rock Charts Looking specifically at America, "Paranoid" jumps into the top 10 for the first time on both the Hot Rock Streaming Songs and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts. The Black Sabbath classic pushes from No. 12 to No. 8 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs ranking — the general list of the biggest tunes in those styles in the country — and surges from No. 14 to No. 6 on the roster that focuses only on the most-streamed rock cuts. "Paranoid" also hits new highs on the Hot Rock Songs and Hard Rock Streaming Songs tallies, settling in at Nos. 7 and 3, respectively. Digital Sales Slip as Streaming Drives Momentum In just its second week on two purchase-only rosters, "Paranoid" declines as streaming is keeping the Black Sabbath favorite going. Last week, it debuted on the Digital Song Sales chart at No. 5 and on the Rock Digital Song Sales ranking in the same spot. This frame, it slips one space on the rock-only ranking and three spaces to No. 8 on the all-style list of the bestselling tunes throughout the country. The Legacy of Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid' "Paranoid" was first released in 1970 as the title track from the band's sophomore album, and it became the rocker's breakthrough hit in the U.K. and U.S. More than 50 years later, the single's reinvigorated chart success underscores its role in shaping the sound of heavy metal and its ability to connect with listeners across generations.
