The Man Caught Between Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried

Here’s just a sampling of the many topics Brandon Sklenar refuses to talk about: the narrative arcs of his new movie, his favorite scenes, the toughest scenes, his character’s transformation, the ending. Especially the ending.

Sklenar stars in The HousemaidPaul Feig’s psychological thriller about a seemingly perfect married couple (Sklenar and Amanda Seyfried) whose lurid secrets bubble up after their maid (played by some blue jeans model named Sydney Sweeney) moves in. It’s based on Freida McFadden’s 2022 novel — a runaway best-seller — but the filmmakers want its many plot twists locked down as long as possible.

What Sklenar can discuss is everything that led him to this leading-man moment. Until a couple of years ago, he was a bona fide journeyman actor — and genuinely fine with that. “I grew up doing construction and started swinging a hammer when I was 10 years old, so I’ve always just worked,” says the 32-year-old, who was raised in Dover, New Jersey, by a carpenter father and a hairdresser mother. After high school, he moved to Los Angeles and took whatever roles came along — an episode of New Girla Robert Mapplethorpe biopic, Adam McKay’s Vice. Then came a call from Taylor Sheridan.

“1923 felt like going through the birth canal,” he says of the Yellowstone prequel, in which he played the great-great-grandfather of Kevin Costner’s John Dutton. “It was my first time doing a project of that scale and at the top of a call sheet.” He impressed Sheridan enough to get brought back — he’s fronting Sheridan’s next movie, a Special Forces drama for Warner Bros. — and went through what he calls a major personal shift. His old construction-worker mindset didn’t translate. “My director on 1923 was like, ‘Dude, you don’t have to work so fucking hard,’ ” he says with a laugh. “I spent a lot of time arguing with him, and then one day it just clicked.”

He carried that looseness into his next project — and found true acting joy for the first time. That job was It Ends With Uswhich of course turned out to be anything but joyful thanks to the ongoing legal battle between his co-star Blake Lively and director Justin Baldoni.

“There was a big learning curve for me because even though I had a small part in the film, my visibility shot through the roof,” he says. At one point during the press tour, the actor posted an Instagram calling for fans to be kinder. “I wasn’t damning anybody, but I was just like, ‘Can we focus on the ethos of this whole fucking movie and not be so hateful to anybody?’ I thought it was a nice thing to say, but apparently a lot of people did not feel that way.”

The blowback came fast: “‘You’re a piece of shit,’ ‘I hope you die,’ ‘I hope your career ends,’ things like that.” His agent — who had another very famous client go through something similar — begged him to stay offline. “But imagine you’re walking down a hallway and there’s a door to a room full of a hundred thousand people and they’re all saying something about you,” Sklenar says. “You tell me you’re not going to put your ear to the door?”

But like all things, that blowback passed. And now he’s having a banner year. This spring, he starred alongside Meghann Fahy in the surprise hit Dropa Blumhouse horror romp that takes place almost entirely in a restaurant on the top floor of a skyscraper. “I’m really happy people loved it, and Meghann became a dear friend and we made it fun, but man, that was monotonous to shoot,” he says, laughing. “Sitting in that restaurant chair on a soundstage for seven weeks. One day, it was, ‘Do you want some calamari?’ And then the next day, ‘How’s your calamari?’ It was a fucking slog, if I’m being honest.”

And this Christmas comes The Housemaidand with it a chance to share screen time with another co-star who knows more than a thing or two about unwanted attention. “Sydney’s been through her fair share,” he says, “and we’ve spoken a bit about it. You really just have to block it out and not let it in.”

But, of course, that’s not something he can talk about.

This story appeared in the Dec. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.