Sharon Stone built a career on the idea that a woman could weaponize her own body and still own the room. So when she tells Sydney Sweeney to “take responsibility” for a nude sports-betting ad, the irony arrives already dressed and ready for work.
At Variety’s Power of Women event in Beverly Hills, Stone was asked about the Novig spot that put Sweeney nearly naked behind footballs, hockey pads, and a basketball hoop. Stone, who played opposite Sweeney in Euphoria’s third season, did not warm up the pitch. “I think that it’s up to [Sweeney] to take responsibility for her actions, not up to me to judge her for her actions,” she told People. Then she planted the flag: “It is up to me to be a cheerleader for the women who have made it through and become champions in women’s sports.” And the closer that actually matters: “We can’t denigrate women’s sports to get men’s attention so they can gamble.”
Look, I get it. Stone is 68, Sweeney is 29, and the gap between Basic Instinct and a prediction-market TikTok is measured in entire media epochs. Stone is allowed to have an opinion. She is also allowed to sound like someone who remembers fighting to try out for the boys’ golf team in high school and still hears the locker-room door slam. Fine. What she is not allowed to do is pretend the creative decision belonged to a committee of strangers.
Sweeney Did Not Stumble Into the Nude Frame
Sweeney approached Novig. She took equity. She drove the visuals and the messaging because she hated the other platforms’ “what color underwear I’m going to wear” markets and wanted a sports-only lane. CEO Jacob Fortinsky confirmed she was creative lead. The spot was shot while she was in Australia filming Gundam. The line she delivers is pure brand catechism: no wars, no deaths, no politics. “Just you, your takes and sports.”
That is not an actress who got ambushed by a lingerie brief. That is a partner who chose the prop department and the body paint. When the ad cleared 40 million views, then 47 million on Instagram, then more than 60 million for the full spot, the platform’s following more than doubled. Google searches for Novig jumped over a thousand percent. Social mentions of the campaign exploded while only a tiny fraction of those posts even named the company. Attention worked exactly as designed.
Sweeney’s response to the athlete backlash was not an apology. It was an Instagram Stories montage pairing her ad with past ESPN Body Issue covers of Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe. The subtext was brutal and clear: you already accepted this currency when the women were Olympians. Why does it suddenly count as denigration when the woman is a movie star selling a betting app?
Stay with me here. That argument has a hole in it, and the athletes saw it immediately.
The Athletes Were Not Confused About the Product
Ariarne Titmus did not hedge. “I can’t describe how infuriated I feel,” the Olympic swimmer wrote. “Not only is it a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft, but every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is — teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity.” Sprinter Amy Hunt finished a race and said on the BBC, “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like.” Gracie Kramer posted competition footage and called the ad a massive step backward: women should not have to take their clothes off to convince men they belong.
They are right about the optics. A prediction market dressed as sports purity while the biggest movie star on the planet straddles a hoop is not a neutral creative choice. It is the male gaze with a terms-of-service update. A Zappi survey of online gamblers put the split in neon: men were far more likely to choose Novig after the ad; women were far more likely to hate the nudity level. The brand won the room it actually wanted.
Novig’s defense was pure corporate shrug. Fortinsky said the platform is “hugely supportive of women’s sports” and the campaign “never intended to portray female sports.” Then the money line: “Sydney is an actress, the biggest movie star in the world. We’re a prediction market focused on sports. That is the story she was communicating.”
In other words: stop confusing the prop with the athlete. Hollywood has run that shell game for a century.
Stone Already Wrote the Permission Slip Once
Here is where the Stone quote gets interesting. Last year, when Sweeney’s American Eagle “good jeans” campaign set the internet on fire, Stone was all gas, no brakes. “It’s okay to use what mama gave you,” she said. “It’s really okay to use every bit of hotness you have — right here, right now — and go for whatever that is.”
Same co-star. Same body. Same commercial instinct. Different product, different sermon. When the product was denim, hotness was empowerment. When the product is a betting app that happens to sit next to women’s sports in the cultural feed, hotness becomes denigration. That is not a moral philosophy. That is a vibe check.
Stone is correct on the responsibility point. Sweeney owns the ad. She pitched the partnership, shaped the creative, and cashed the attention. Pretending she is a victim of a rogue marketing department insults everyone in the room, including the athletes who spent their lives training while someone else posed with the equipment. Ownership is the whole job.
But the larger claim — that this ad denigrates women’s sports by existing — collapses the second you admit Sweeney was never claiming to be the sport. She was selling a market. The athletes are furious because the market used their arena as wallpaper. The brand is thrilled because the wallpaper went viral. Stone is performing elder-stateswoman duty at a Power of Women lunch. Everybody is on brand.
The numbers will not care. Novig got the spike. Sweeney’s follower count dipped, then recovered with a net gain. The athletes got the moral high ground and a week of righteous clarity. Stone got the quote. The ad itself is already half-forgotten by the algorithm that made it famous, which is the most Hollywood ending available.
Sweeney took the shot. She should own the splash. Stone is right about that much. The rest is just Hollywood arguing with itself about whose body counts as politics this week, while the betting app counts the clicks.
