Sydney Sweeney’s New Novig Ad Says the Quiet Part Out Loud — in White Underwear
After backlash over her sports-betting campaign, the Euphoria star is doubling down with footballs, a pair of logo panties and one extremely unapologetic punchline.
Sydney Sweeney has looked at the backlash, considered the discourse, and apparently decided it needed better lighting.
The actress is back in another Novig ad, and this time the campaign is making absolutely no attempt to sneak past the conversation. Sweeney appears wearing only white underwear emblazoned with the sports-prediction app’s logo, while two footballs do the strategic covering that television standards departments have been training for since the dawn of broadcast television.
“There are grown men making spreadsheets to bet on what color underwear I’m wearing,” she says in the ad. “I mean, I’m flattered?”
It is not a retreat. It is a sequel with better punchlines.
The backlash got a wardrobe change
Novig’s first Sweeney campaign drew criticism last month for using the actress’s appearance to sell a sports-prediction and trading app. Critics argued that the ads sexualized female athletes and reduced women’s relationship with sports to physical appearance, rather than competition, skill or fandom.
That criticism did not send Sweeney quietly into a brand-safe beige corner. Instead, she posted even more stripped-down images from the campaign on Instagram, then shared images of athletes including Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Karl-Anthony Towns and Jason Kelce who had appeared without clothing for ESPN’s Body Issue.
The message, as presented by the campaign, was clear enough: nudity in sports imagery is not automatically unserious or insulting. The complication is that the Novig ads are not editorial portraits of athletes. They are selling a betting product, and the question hanging over the whole thing is whether the campaign is celebrating sports culture, borrowing its visual language, or simply using Sweeney’s star power to get people to stop scrolling.
Now the new spot has stepped directly into that argument, wearing nothing but branded underwear and a pair of props with laces.
“Novig is… just sports”
The ad’s joke is built around the strange specificity of sports-betting culture. Sweeney says there are people tracking the color of her underwear, someone “sitting in a bathroom stall and betting their 401k on a w–re,” and then contrasts that with people who trade on sports.
“Novig is… just sports,” she concludes.
That line is doing a lot of work. It is part defense, part provocation and part wink at the idea that the internet will turn literally anything into a market. Sweeney is not pretending the campaign has been misunderstood. She is acknowledging exactly why people are talking about it and then making the conversation part of the advertisement.
It is a classic attention-economy move: if the original ad was accused of making women’s sports about men’s gaze, the follow-up makes the gaze itself the punchline. Whether that feels clever or calculated probably depends on how much patience one has for a celebrity appearing in branded underwear while explaining prediction markets.
Either way, the campaign has achieved the one thing advertising departments crave and most brand launches never get: a second act. The first ad created backlash. The second ad is about the backlash. Somewhere, a marketing executive is whispering “engagement” into a crystal champagne flute.
Fans are in on the bit — and Sharon Stone is not
According to Page Six, the new spot received plenty of supportive comments from fans, including one predicting that Sweeney was about to “piss them off again.” Another commenter wrote, “I love this! And I love all the Jealous Girls, yelling when they see another new Spot,” while a third joked, “I think Sydney loves being hated.”
That reaction captures Sweeney’s current celebrity weather. She has become unusually good at turning the internet’s arguments into another piece of the look. The campaign’s provocations are not being presented as unfortunate side effects; they are part of the personality. Sweeney, 29, is playing the role of the woman who knows exactly what everyone is going to say and has already prepared the next outfit.
But not everyone sees the joke as harmless. Her Euphoria co-star Sharon Stone recently criticized the ads, telling People that Sweeney needed to take responsibility for her actions. Stone said her own role was to support women who had become champions in women’s sports, adding, “We can’t denigrate women’s sports to get men’s attention so they can gamble.”
That is the serious question underneath all the footballs: Is the ad reclaiming a familiar kind of sexualized imagery, or is it simply repackaging that imagery for a male-heavy betting audience? Sweeney’s response has been to lean into the visual language even harder. Stone’s response is that the visual language is the problem.
Both positions are now part of the campaign, which is probably the most modern thing about it.
The Sydney Sweeney strategy: never let the internet finish the sentence
Sweeney’s recent public image has been shaped by a talent for making herself impossible to discuss in only one register. She can be the glamorous movie star, the Euphoria alum, the face of a provocative campaign and the person posting a response before the criticism has fully cooled down.
The Novig ads are especially combustible because they borrow from several familiar celebrity ingredients at once: lingerie, sports, gambling, internet thirst and the carefully staged illusion of spontaneity. The white panties are not just underwear; they are merchandise. The footballs are not just footballs; they are a visual gag. The line about grown men making spreadsheets is not just dialogue; it is a direct address to the people who have already turned the campaign into a group chat topic.
And Sweeney understands that a defensive celebrity statement would have killed the mood. There is no solemn paragraph about being misunderstood here. There is no attempt to make the ad sound educational. There is just a smirk, a pair of footballs and the suggestion that if the internet insists on making her body part of the conversation, she can at least write the next line.
That does not settle the argument over the campaign’s relationship to women’s sports. It does explain why the campaign keeps moving. Every complaint gives the next ad a new opening. Every joke becomes another caption. Every round of outrage supplies the brand with a fresh excuse to put Sweeney back in front of the camera.
So yes, Sydney Sweeney has doubled down. The new Novig ad is not asking anyone to stop looking. It is asking whether they can keep up.
Olivia Culpo and Christian McCaffrey Just Went From One Under Two to a Family of Four
The couple welcomed Roman Augustus McCaffrey nearly 15 months after daughter Colette — and Culpo’s “Heart is exploding” update has officially made their very polished family era a two-under-two production.
Olivia Culpo and Christian McCaffrey have added another tiny person to their already camera-ready household, and the name is giving Roman holiday, old-money stationery, and a baby who will somehow look better in a knit onesie than most adults look in formalwear.
The couple announced Saturday that they welcomed their second child, Roman Augustus McCaffrey, on Sept. 29. Culpo shared the news in a joint Instagram post with McCaffrey, captioning it simply with the baby’s name and a white heart. The slideshow featured the new family of four: Culpo and McCaffrey holding Roman, while their 1-year-old daughter, Colette, stepped into her new role as big sister.
“Heart is exploding,” Culpo wrote on her Instagram Stories. Frankly, that is the only appropriate caption when your household has just gone from one baby to two and your toddler is suddenly the senior member of the sibling division.
Meet Roman Augustus, the newest McCaffrey
Roman’s arrival gives the Culpo-McCaffrey family a neat new shape, though the timing has been anything but a slow, carefully staged expansion. Colette was born in July 2025, and the couple conceived their second child six months after Culpo’s C-section. Culpo previously acknowledged that the pregnancy was not something she had planned so soon.
“I did not think that this was going to happen the way that it did,” she said in a TikTok shared in May, as reported by Page Six. She also described herself as not “totally healed” and said she had only just started to feel like she was getting her groove back. She had been working out and noticing her abs returning, then found herself confronting the reality that her body had other priorities.
That is a particularly Culpo kind of plot twist: a perfectly timed return-to-self arc interrupted by a second baby. One minute, the postpartum comeback montage; the next, a new nursery, another car seat, and a family group chat permanently dominated by nap updates.
The couple chose not to find out the baby’s sex before the birth, just as they did with Colette. Culpo had previously said that waiting would be “such a nice surprise” and that being healthy was the main thing they could ask for. Her intuition had told her in March 2025 that she was having a boy, but Colette arrived instead. This time, the surprise has a name that sounds ready for a very serious birth announcement in a very glossy magazine.
From “best birthday gift” to baby No. 2
Culpo announced her second pregnancy in May with maternity-shoot photos featuring McCaffrey and Colette. “Best birthday gift,” she wrote, adding, “Baby #2 coming soon.” The post arrived less than a year after the couple’s wedding and just months before the birth of their first child, making this one of those celebrity timelines that seems to move at streaming-drama speed.
Culpo and McCaffrey began dating in 2019, got engaged in 2023, and married in June 2024. They announced they were expecting their first child the following month. By the time Colette arrived in July 2025, the couple had already moved from long-running romance to newlywed life to parenthood with the efficiency of people who do not appear to enjoy leaving a calendar blank.
Before becoming a mother, Culpo had spoken openly about her worries over whether pregnancy would be possible for her because of endometriosis. On an episode of her family’s reality series, “The Culpo Sisters,” she said in 2022 that she wanted children but wanted to make sure she could have them. That history gives the latest announcement more emotional weight than a standard celebrity baby slideshow: the family she once feared might be difficult to build is now growing faster than expected.
It also explains why the announcement lands as more than just another famous couple adding a baby to the roster. Culpo has been candid about the physical and emotional whiplash of pregnancy, recovery, body changes and the pressure to feel like herself again immediately. Her comments about seeing her abs return before discovering that her body was preparing for another pregnancy were candid in a way celebrity motherhood updates often are not.
The family-of-four soft launch is complete
The joint post keeps the reveal centered on the family rather than turning Roman into a solo celebrity cameo. There is Culpo, there is McCaffrey, there is baby Roman, and there is Colette looking very much like the person who will eventually decide whether the new arrival is allowed anywhere near her toys.
That first glimpse of Colette as a big sister is the real social-media hook. Celebrity babies are generally introduced in the same few visual languages — tiny hand, swaddled foot, tasteful blanket, perhaps a parent’s emotional caption — but adding a toddler to the frame instantly changes the energy. This is no longer just a birth announcement. It is the beginning of a sibling storyline, complete with matching outfits, family vacations, birthday-party content and the inevitable future photos in which Roman is trying to escape while Colette understands the assignment.
Culpo’s public style has always leaned polished, from her pageant background to the highly curated maternity looks and family images that have followed. But the latest update is charmingly uncomplicated: a name, a date, a slideshow and one very full heart. No dramatic rollout was required. The family had already supplied the plot.
For now, Roman Augustus McCaffrey is the newest member of a family that has spent the past few years moving through romance, marriage, parenthood and an unexpectedly rapid sequel. Culpo and McCaffrey have not announced anything beyond the birth itself, but the message is clear enough: the McCaffrey household is officially in its two-under-two era, and Colette has been promoted.
Gwyneth Officiated, Katy Sat by Adam, and the Lowes Had a Very Famous Wedding Weekend
Matthew Lowe married Emily Markus in Santa Barbara with Gwyneth Paltrow at the altar and half of Hollywood in the audience — a glittering family celebration arriving during an intensely painful chapter for the Lowe clan.
Some weddings have a seating chart. This one had a celebrity ecosystem.
Matthew Lowe, the eldest son of Rob Lowe and Sheryl Berkoff, married Emily Markus in Santa Barbara on Saturday, turning a private family milestone into the kind of starry gathering that practically arrives with its own group chat. Gwyneth Paltrow officiated. Cameron Diaz sat beside Zoe Saldaña and Marco Perego-Saldaña. Katy Perry was spotted in front of Adam Levine and Behati Prinsloo. Chris Pratt was seated away from wife Katherine Schwarzenegger and several members of her family. Maria Shriver appeared with a cluster of her children, including Christina, Christopher and Patrick Schwarzenegger, who attended with Abby Champion.
In other words: this was less “wedding guest list” and more “Hollywood family tree with assigned seating.”
Gwyneth Paltrow, wedding officiant: a very Goop-coded choice
Paltrow taking the ceremony is the detail that gives the whole event its particular Los Angeles sheen. The Oscar winner and lifestyle mogul officiated while her husband, Brad Falchuk, was also photographed at the festivities alongside Rob Lowe and Berkoff.
It is a perfect bit of celebrity-world connective tissue: Paltrow is not merely a famous person who showed up for the photos, but someone close enough to the family orbit to stand at the altar. The result is a wedding that feels intimate and extraordinarily famous at the same time — the social equivalent of bumping into three different friend groups at the same restaurant, except every table contains a household name.
Page Six published exclusive photos from the celebration, which was said to take place at a private residence in Santa Barbara. The images capture the familiar wedding-day tableau — family in the front row, friends chatting across aisles, glamorous guests apparently attempting to behave like normal people while sitting next to other glamorous guests.
The seating chart had its own plot
Katy Perry’s placement in front of Adam Levine and Behati Prinsloo immediately supplies the sort of visual that makes a wedding feel like an awards-season afterparty. Cameron Diaz sat with Saldaña and Perego-Saldaña, while Pratt was photographed apart from Schwarzenegger and some of her relatives.
That last detail is exactly the kind of thing the internet can turn into a conspiracy board in under six minutes, but a seating arrangement is still just a seating arrangement. Weddings are logistical beasts. People get placed where there is room, where family dynamics make sense, or wherever the planner’s spreadsheet sends them. The photo is fun; it does not automatically come with a subplot.
Shriver’s row was another reminder that this was a deeply interwoven Southern California affair. Her children appeared together, with Katherine seated behind them and photographed chatting with Patrick. The Lowes, Schwarzeneggers and a long list of Hollywood friends have overlapped socially for years, so the guest list reads less like a random roll call than a map of a particularly well-connected extended community.
A sunset sneak peek before the famous faces arrived
Before the ceremony, Markus offered a small glimpse of the weekend on Instagram Stories: a sunset view of tables and festive flags at local restaurant Bluewater Grill, captioned, “It’s wedding weekend eve!” It was the kind of soft-launch wedding content that gives followers just enough atmosphere without handing over the entire event.
No overproduced reveal, no exhaustive carousel, no suspiciously sponsored champagne tower — just sunset, tables and the promise that something big was about to happen. Then came Paltrow at the altar and a guest list that could have doubled as a late-night talk-show lineup.
Matthew, 33, is Rob and Berkoff’s eldest son. The couple, married for 35 years, also share John Owen Lowe, 30. John Owen has become a recognizable public figure in his own right, particularly through his acting and social-media presence, but this weekend placed the focus on his brother and new sister-in-law.
A joyful weekend in a painful family chapter
The wedding took place less than two weeks after the death of Matthew and John Owen’s cousin, Fiona Lowe, the 13-year-old daughter of Rob’s brother Chad Lowe and producer Kim Painter. Fiona’s family described her as smart, creative, loving and passionate about dance in a statement shared with Page Six, while asking for privacy and prayers.
Her death was later determined to be suicide, according to Los Angeles Medical Examiner records obtained by Page Six. The timing places Matthew’s wedding in an especially complicated emotional space: a major celebration arriving while the family was still grieving a devastating loss.
That tension is visible in the broader public story around the Lowes. Chad recently returned to social media by sharing a clip from Olivia Hunt’s “On Healing” podcast, while John Owen posted lines from Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” after Fiona’s death. The poem’s image of hope as “the thing with feathers” became a quiet expression of endurance during a period when the family had little public to say and even less reason to say it.
The wedding itself was not presented as a statement about moving on, and there is no reason to force one onto it. Families do not grieve in a single uninterrupted mood. They gather, they show up, they stand beside one another, and sometimes they celebrate a marriage while carrying something unbearably sad into the room. The famous faces and polished Santa Barbara setting may make the weekend look glossy, but the family context is anything but simple.
Still, the wedding offered a snapshot of the Lowe circle doing what close families often do in difficult seasons: surrounding one another. Rob and Berkoff sat in the front row. John Owen was there. Paltrow helped lead the ceremony. Friends from across Hollywood filled the seats. And Emily Markus, after teasing the festivities with one sunset Story, became a bride at the center of one of the most star-studded family gatherings of the year.
It was glamorous, crowded and unmistakably personal — a celebration with a guest list built for gossip, but a family reality that demands a little more care than the photographs alone can show.
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.