Sydney Sweeney Is Related to Marilyn Monroe: According to new research from MyHeritage, the two actors are reportedly ninth cousins, once removed, connected through a shared ancestor who lived in 17th-century Massachusetts, Ezra Perry.
The actors’ connection reveals a greater aspect of fan culture and celebrity culture in the Internet era. With the news being circulated, many internet users have opinions that are freely put on social media, where the discourse continues. There is a certain fascination; something fans find delicious about finding out that two people we have spent years watching have a thread tying their family histories together.
Celebrity news has developed a peculiar second layer; something happens to a famous person, and the internet does not simply react to it anymore; it investigates, cross-references, zooms in, pulls up old interviews and photographs, notices something even the celebrity does not notice and suddenly a piece of information that was probably meant to be a fun little pop-culture fact becomes an search engine tab with many others waiting.
Sydney Sweeney Is Related to Marilyn Monroe
Let us give the genealogy its moment before we turn it into a sociology lesson or the beginning of some new celebrity theory. MyHeritage’s research reportedly found that Sweeney and Monroe share an ancestor, Ezra Perry, making them ninth cousins, once removed. The ancestor, Perry, reportedly lived in Sandwich, Massachusetts, in the 1600s.
The relation is distant: we are not talking about Sweeney suddenly discovering that Marilyn was secretly Aunt Marilyn; we are talking about genealogy. Humans are weirdly connected; travel enough branches backwards and eventually someone is standing there holding a historical plot twist.
The underlying part is the reactions that flood the internet after the reveal. Internet users seem to have taken it on themselves to carry a discourse to further investigate the situation. Many users feel that this connection is almost absurd, while some compare the work of the two actors. X user @angiyamz writes, “Marilyn spoke up for oppressed groups and was an inspiring role model who had so much compassion and empathy for those in her life….. unlike sydney who’s just desperate for any kind of relevancy.”
The Internet Does Not Just Consume Celebrity News, They Complete It
Celebrity culture today rarely leaves a piece of information sitting by itself. A headline says one thing; the internet asks what it means, what happened, while someone finds an old photo, an interview, altogether a completely different person in the entire dissection of the topic, and then someone makes an Instagram reel explaining the situation.
Sydney Sweeney being related to Marilyn Monroe brings back the conversation around the entitlement fans seem to carry around the entire celebrity culture and news. Whether or not this relation makes a difference is an entirely different topic, but the theme here is how people on the internet love to dissect and compare celebrities. The internet has started reacting to the news in the comment sections and as X posts. The utter disbelief that is being shown is worth noting, while some highlight the earlier comparisons that were drawn by the fans between the two actors.
The Social Media users also seem to be comparing the work and even the personality of the two celebrities.
We Have Somehow Become Very Comfortable With Celebrity Lives
This is the part that should be thought about in the larger context of celebrity news, because there is a difference between being interested in a celebrity and believing that the celebrity owes you access: the first seems normal, but the second is something the internet has normalised.
We know where the celebrities are, who they are dating, what they ate, who they followed and unfollowed, which holiday they went for, which ring appeared on their finger, a caption with some hidden meaning, and if the celebrity does not explain it, the internet does it for itself.
This is the strange entitlement sitting below celebrity discourse; people often speak about famous people as though public visibility means permanent public availability; as though becoming famous means agreeing to have your life interpreted by strangers forever, and social media has made the feeling even stronger because celebrities can appear directly on our screens and when something happens, we notice.
The distance between celebrity and audience becomes so thin that we forget the distance that is still present: a screen is not access; a follow is not friendship; a public photograph is not an invitation to know the entire personality.
“But They Chose Fame” Argument
Of course, they chose fame! But when did fame become a waiver signed at the bottom of the contract saying “I hereby consent to the public having an opinion about every cell of my existence”? There is a difference between being publicly accountable for the work you put into the world and being publicly available for the details of your personal life. Sydney Sweeney’s work is public, but that does not make every family detail, relationship decision or personal thought public property. Discussions about a celebrity’s work- the films, shows, ads, interviews are not equal to discussions around their private life.
The celebrity names change; the information around the private life changes; but the audience’s behaviour largely remains the same.
Celebrity culture can be fascinating: films, performances, fashion, relationships with fame, public image, fandom – all of it tells us something about the culture we are living in, but perhaps we need to get better at knowing where the fascination ends, and the entitlement begins.
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