There's A Brand New Wrinkle To Sydney Sweeney's Alleged Misappropriation Of The Hollywood Sign

Sydney Sweeney is probably having a pret-ty good start to 2026 so far, between eclipsing her own box office record with The Housemaid and promoting upcoming projects like Euphoria Season 3 and The Devil Wears Prada 2. Oh, there’s also her new lingerie line that sold out in mere hours thanks in large part to that viral promotional video seemingly showing Sweeney and others draping a bunch of bras over L.A.’s famed Hollywood sign. Now, the man responsible for the sign’s upkeep has weighed in with both anger and doubts.

Questions still remain even a week after Sweeney’s video first hit the Internet, in terms of how it was pulled off and whether or not any laws were broken while filming it. To date, the actress and her reps have maintained silence on the matter, but Jeff Zarrinnam, head of the Hollywood Sign Trust, addressed the headline-making semi-prank with the BBC’s Newsbeat, saying that the filming that occurred around the sign was not officially authorized at all, and that he’s conducting his own investigation into the matter.

That said, Zarrinnam doesn’t believe the entire video is authentic, and calls into question the logistics behind the video’s final shots where the entire sign can be seen covered in SYRN bras before cutting to Sweeney celebrating. In his words:

Over the years, Zarrinnam has worked with various people and organizations to properly set up promotions that involve filming at the sign or altering the look of it in some way. Perhaps most notably, the message "Rams House" was put in front of the sign after the L.A. Rams won the Super Bowl in 2022. (Coincidentally, or not, this year's Super Bowl-bound Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua recently dropped agreeable comments on one of Sweeney's posts.) As such, he has a keen idea of how long such decorating would take.

Zarrinnam also shared that anyone assuming that Sweeney was climbing the "H" in the video is wrong, and that things might not have turned out so great if that guess was on point. As he put it:

While sticking firm to the claim that no one from Sydney Sweeney's side has been in communication with the Hollywood Sign trust despite attempts to make contact, Zarrinnam says the actress' team did properly acquire permits to film in Griffith Park and the city in general, and he suggests it's possible that those involved mistakenly thought they'd successfully secured permission. But beyond that, the  Hollywood Chamber of Commerce also has to give licensing permission to feature the sign on film, which did not happen in Sweeney's case.

One of the legitimacy questions fans had about the video was regarding the lack of a police presence, and why seemingly no alarms were triggered when they approached the sign to begin with. Jeff Zarrinnam pointed out that the motion sensor alarms did go off, and residents living near the sign reached out to alert him. However, he says there was some kind of "miscommunication," believing that a crew member erroneously explained that they had filming permission, and thus the LAPD was not contacted directly.

Which brings us back to the question of how much of the video is real, and how much of it was just visual trickery? Maybe for her next viral vid, Sydney Sweeney will drape her SYRN brand's bras across Mount Rushmore, or someone can use them to bungee jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. Or maybe just a normal bra ad.