‘Reality’ True Story: How A Real FBI Interrogation Became a Sydney Sweeney Movie (2024)

Reality, the new Sydney Sweeney HBO movie that is now streaming on Max, is a slow burn. For those not familiar with the true story of Reality Winner, you’ll spend much of the movie wondering what the hell it is that Sweeney’s character did. Because, obviously, she did something bad enough to warrant two FBI agents to ambush her in the middle of the day, when she was pulling into her house after a grocery run.

As a text card informs viewers at the beginning of the film, all of the dialogue in the movie is taken from a transcript of an actual FBI recording of the search of Winner’s house and her interrogation. But we don’t get to find out what Winner actually did until near the end of the movie—and even then, it’s confusing, thanks to certain classified information being censored from the transcript.

Lucky for you, that’s where Decider comes in. Read on to learn about the Reality true story, and what, exactly, Reality Winner did. (And yes, that is her real name, given to her at birth.)

Is the Sydney Sweeney movie Reality based on a true story?

Yes. Reality is based on the true story of a former National Security Agency translator, Reality Winner, who was arrested by the FBI in 2017 for leaking intelligence documents. She was 25 years old when she was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison in August 2018.

The Reality movie—directed by Tina Satter from a screenplay by Satter and James Paul Dallas, adapted from Satter’s 2019 stage play, Is This A Room—uses almost exclusively verbatim dialogue from the recorded search, interrogation, and arrest of Winner on June 3, 2017. The FBI released a censored transcript of the Winner’s interrogation in court filings while the 25-year-old was awaiting file, which was when playwright Tina Satter first read them.

“I had never read anything like that,” Satter said in a 2019 interview with The New Yorker. “Literally, I was, like, ‘This is a play.’” Though the actors interpreted the transcript on their own—the actual FBI recording is not used—all of the dialogue comes from the transcript, and is in the order it actually happened. “If you are totally cold to the text, you might not understand it is sequential,” Satter said in the same interview. “I think that’s [the FBI agent’s] technique. To slowly disorient her, to keep the pressure on, to ask so many questions.”

What did Reality Winner do?

While working for the NSA as a translator, Winner leaked intelligence documents about the Russian interference in the 2016 election to the press. She was charged with “removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.”

According to her own confession, Winner printed out classified NSA documents at work and hid them in her pantyhose to smuggle them out of the building. She then drove straight a mailbox, where she mailed the documents—using envelopes and stamps she keeps in her car—to the address listed on the website for The Intercept, used for anonymous tips. She did not include a note of any kind.

As reported by The Intercept days after Winner’s arrest, these leaked documents described Russian military efforts to influence dozens of local election officials ahead of the 2016 election, by sending “sent spear-phishing emails”—or emails that claim to be from a secure sender in an attempt to get users to provide confidential information—to over 100 local election officials, as well as an attempt to hack into U.S. voting software. While attempting to verify the authenticity of the document they received, the reporters at The Intercept inadvertently helped the FBI track down and arrest Winner.

After serving four years in prison, Winner told Rolling Stone she was furious with the way The Intercept handled the leak. “I wasn’t the first source that they burned and I definitely wasn’t the last — two other people have done prison time [due to] them being extremely sloppy,” Winner said. She continued, “I knew what I was doing, I faced the consequences. That’s fine. It’s their attitude towards it. It’s the sloppiness… I have a lot of bitterness in my heart towards them.”

Where is Reality Winner now?

Winner, who is now 31, was released from prison in June 2021, after having served four years behind bars. She is still on probation until 2024, which means she is drug tested every two weeks, has a 10 p.m. curfew, and needs permission from her probation officer for overnight trips. According to her Rolling Stone profile, she spends much of her time working out and caring for her horse, named Trouble, in her hometown of Kingsville, Texas.