Sydney Sweeney Is ‘So Excited’ to Meet Kim Novak Before Playing Her in Biopic (Exclusive)

Sydney Sweeney is counting down the days until she comes face-to-face with Kim Novak. 

Ahead of portraying the Hollywood legend in the upcoming biopic Scandalous!, Sweeney, 28, exclusively tells PEOPLE that while she hasn’t met the Vertigo star just yet, she will soon have the opportunity to pick her brain. 

“I’m incredibly honored to be bringing Kim to life. I mean, she is such an amazing actress,” Sweeney says during the Oct. 25 premiere of her latest film, Christy, at AFI Fest 2025. “I think her story is still very relevant today in that she dealt with Hollywood and scrutiny with her relationships and her own private life and the control of her image. And I think that for me, I relate to it in a lot of different ways.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

The upcoming film will follow the real-life story of the 1950s romance between Novak and the late musician Sammy Davis Jr. And while Colman Domingo, who is making his directorial debut with the biopic, has already met Novak, 92, Sweeney has committed to finishing the third season of Euphoria before she turns her focus to Scandalous!

“Once I finish Euphoria, I switch into Scandalous! gear and I’m going to turn my brain into Kim,” Sweeney tells PEOPLE. “I’m so excited. I’m like, ‘Oh my God. I’m going to meet Kim Novak.’ ”

More recently, the Anyone But You actress has been channeling most of her physical and emotional energy into embodying female boxer Christy Martin in her latest movie, Christy. And according to Sweeney, achieving a boxer’s physique was no easy feat. 

“Whenever I would go on set, especially when I had some of my boxing scenes, I would call my trainer and say, ‘I don’t feel big enough. I feel small.’ And I was getting in my head and I wasn’t feeling like I gained enough,” she recalls.

Sweeney continues: “And he was like, ‘This is actually what happens to a lot of bodybuilders before a tournament. They feel small, they get in their head, and it’s all mental games.’ So it was learning a lot about trying to get over that.”