Sydney Sweeney hopes ‘Christy’ helps save domestic violence survivors

Christy, based on the journey of Christy Martin, the boxer who broke barriers for women in the sport, also delves into her abusive marriage to her manager, Jim Martin.

Now known as Christy Salters, she participated in the film’s development, though the team remained aware they were portraying her real-life trauma.

Sydney Sweeney, who stars in the film and produced it with Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, ensured the process was handled carefully.

The production scheduled the film’s most violent scene, Jim’s major assault on Christy, played by Ben Foster, to be shot before Salters visited the set.

In Los Angeles, while addressing the Contenders Film stage, Sweeney said they wanted to protect Christy from those traumatic scenes.

“That following Monday, Christy came for the first day,” Sweeney recalled. “When she walked in, the entire crew just stood up and started applauding her because they’d seen firsthand what she went through."

Sweeney reflected that everyone's reaction while the boxer stood there was a big revelation for her that the importance of the story really hit everyone.

Depicting the domestic violence storyline for audiences has been as important to Sweeney as the boxing story.

“She’s an incredible role model so being able to bring her story to a wider audience and hopefully save lives through that has been the greatest gift that I could’ve ever been given," the Euphoria actress said.

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