Kim Novak Says Sydney Sweeney Shouldn’t Play Her: She ‘Sticks Out So Much Above the Waist’
What To Know
- Kim Novak publicly criticized the casting of Sydney Sweeney as herself in the planned biopic ‘Scandalous!’
- Novak confirmed longstanding rumors that Columbia Pictures’ president threatened Sammy Davis Jr. over their interracial relationship, leading to Davis marrying a Black woman under duress.
- Despite Sweeney expressing excitement about portraying Novak, the film’s development appears stalled.
The planned biopic Scandalous! might not reach theaters, but it sounds like its subject, Kim Novak, wouldn’t mind if it didn’t. In a new interview, Novak expressed dismay that Sydney Sweeney was cast to play her in the film.
“I would never have approved,” the Vertigo star told The Times in a profile posted online on Friday. “[Sweeney] sticks out so much above the waist.”
Scandalous!, announced a year and a half ago, would have Colman Domingo directing Sweeney, his Euphoria costar, in a biopic about the 1950s-era romance between Novak and singer Sammy Davis Jr., played by David Jonsson.
Novak told The Times that she and Davis were drawn to each other because they had “so much in common,” and she worries the casting of the buxom Sweeney would mean the film would focus on them having sexual chemistry. “There’s no way it wouldn’t be a sexual relationship because Sydney Sweeney looks sexy all the time,” she reasoned. “She was totally wrong to play me.”
Matej Divizna/Getty Images
In the same interview, Novak gave more insight into her 1957 tryst with Davis. Rumor had it that Harry Cohn, then president of Columbia Pictures, paid a mobster to threaten to break Davis’ legs and blind him unless the “Something’s Gotta Give” singer married a Black woman. (Under the threat of violence, Davis married Loray White, a Black singer, in 1958, according to Smithsonian.)
And Novak told The Times she believes that rumor. “Oh, I know it was true,” she said. “Because of the color of [Davis’] skin, people did terrible things.”
But she denied reports that she and the Rat Pack star got a marriage license. “No, no,” she said. “I mean, he loved me. I cared for him deeply. But at that time I never wanted to marry anybody.”
The Times notes that development on Scandalous! seems to be at a standstill, but Sweeney previously raved about the prospect of playing Novak.
“I’m incredibly honored to be bringing Kim to life. I mean, she is such an amazing actress,” she told People in October 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.”
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