As Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye and Lily-Rose Depp promoted The Idol, we often got the impression that they were promoting two different shows. Lily-Rose seems to believe that she’s promoting a show where her character is going through a brave feminist journey of escaping the clasp of a cult leader, sort of. Abel seems to believe that he’s playing a sexy, charming psycho who can get women to do whatever he wants. Anyway, I’m still not watching this crap, but a lot of you are, and I’ve seen some of the “commentary” and jokes about the cheesy grossness of The Idol. Now that two episodes are out and everyone keeps talking about how Abel is a terrible, charisma-free actor, it’s time for Abel to come out and say, hahaha, no, I’m in on the joke, you guys. My character is supposed to be a cheeseball! My character is supposed to be a charisma-vacuum loser! Some highlights from Abel’s GQ interview this week:
How he feels about the response to The Idol: “I’m loving it. It’s definitely shaken up the culture for sure [laughs]. We knew we were making something dark and controversial but true to what we want to say.
He’s fine with the conversation: “I just think discussion is healthy, no matter what. To me it’s like, I’m just happy that there’s conversation. That’s important for anything I do, especially this new medium that I’m in.
Peeling back the layers of Tedros: “When I’m trying to explain who he is, it’s tough without revealing too much, without peeling away too much of the layers. You try to be as mysterious as possible about who the character is so that you can take [the audience] on this journey. But piece by piece, week by week, we’ll reveal who he is. But he’s what you see on screen. He’s definitely a challenge. He’s despicable, a psychopath—why sugarcoat it? But he’s somehow useful to this girl, and it’s unfortunate and we hate to see it.
But Tedros isn’t actually a layered, mysterious guy: “Yeah, [the vampire imagery is] all intentional to heighten the camp of it all. But the reality is, there’s nothing really mysterious or hypnotizing about him. And we did that on purpose with his look, his outfits, his hair—the guy’s a douchebag. You can tell he cares so much about what he looks like, and he thinks he looks good. But then you see these weird moments of him alone—he rehearses, he’s calculated. And he needs to do that, or he has nothing, he’s pathetic. Which is true of a lot of people who are a fish out of water, put into these scenarios.
Tedros is just a con artist: “You look at him, and this is a score—Jocelyn might be the biggest score he’s ever had. It’s very obvious. He’s over-indulging, he walks into this house looking around like, Goddamn, am I way over my head? This can be the biggest job I’ve ever done. Whatever it is that he’s doing. Even the sex, it’s so gluttonous [laughs]. Especially in episode 2. ‘Gluttony’ is the only word I can think of [to describe it]. He can’t believe he’s there. He comes off like such a loser. Those moments are the humanity that you find in a psychopath, the chink in his armor.
Those exploitative sex scenes aren’t supposed to be sexy: “There’s nothing sexy about it. When we use Basic Instinct as a reference, we’re using Verhoeven. Verhoeven is the king of ‘90s satire thriller—yes, there’s moments of “sexy” in his films but there are other moments that are very cheesy and hilarious. How ever you’re feeling watching that scene, whether it’s discomfort, or you feel gross, or you feel embarrassed for the characters. It’s all those emotions adding up to: This guy is in way over his head, this situation is one where he is not supposed to be here.
It’s actually hilarious to me that he’s now trying to play off all of the criticism as “you guys, we meant to do that” and “of course it’s supposed to be gross and awkward and awful, we were trying to do that!” Here’s the thing: even if you could successfully argue that Abel’s character Tedros was supposed to be telegraphing his lack of charisma, his loser energy… then why didn’t they make it realistic when it came to how Lily-Rose’s character reacts to him? This is the problem. Anyway… yeah, it’s so funny to me. “I meant to do that, you just couldn’t tell because I’m such a terrible actor!”
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- Sam Levinson, Lily-Rose Depp and Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye attend “The Idol” photocall at the 76th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 23, 2023 in Cannes, France.,Image: 778496867, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Olivier Huitel / Avalon
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- Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye attend “The Idol” photocall at the 76th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 23, 2023 in Cannes, France,Image: 778497580, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Olivier Huitel / Avalon
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- Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye and Lily-Rose Depp attend “The Idol” photocall at the 76th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 23, 2023 in Cannes, France,Image: 778498062, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Olivier Huitel / Avalon
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- Abel Makkonen Tesfaye aka The Weeknd photographed during the photocall for The Idol as part of the 76th Cannes International Film Festival at Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France on 23 May 2023.,Image: 778513544, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Julie Edwards / Avalon
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- Premiere of ‘The Idol’ during the 76 Cannes Film Festival. Featuring: Abel Tesfaye, The Weeknd, Lily-Rose Depp and Sam Levinson Where: Cannes, France When: 23 May 2023 Credit: Aurore Marechal/Abaca Press/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
Maybe we would pick up on that if you could act!
The problem is, you cannot play a character as a loser. The character has to think of himself as a winner, as smarter, as cleverer, and the actor has to get in that mindset too in order to sell it. You cannot play charisma-free or even “trying to have charisma.” You play “I’m the shit” or it reads as false. Methinks Abel is learning this the hard way…if he’s open to learning (to act) at all.
I just can’t shake that this whole fiasco feels grimly exploitative of Lily Rose Depp, who is pretty much always naked or semi-naked (unlike Abel). I hope I’m wrong and her experience filming this crap was OK.
Abel’s character just talks, talks, talks to Lily, from across the room, while she supposedly pleasures herself. Where is the actual sex? His sex talk is EWWWW. It doesn’t even turn HIM on.
Unrelated to the show, I got into The Weeknd’s music not too long ago. It’s hard for me to find newer acts I really like so I was very excited when I discovered him, especially his last two albums. He’s like the perfect mix of R&B, 80s new wave, rock and synthwave.
Then I started paying attention to his lyrics and was perturbed. There’s a lot of misogyny there. I started reading up a bit on him and his whole “persona” seems to be a dark and twisted fellow who can’t save himself so he’s looking for a woman to save him even though he mistreats them.
He claims it’s all an “act” and he’s not really like that. Then, I did a bit more digging and apparently, there’s speculation he’s mistreated most of his partners. There are even stories of how bad he was before he made it big.
Now he created and stars in a show about him abusing and exploiting a younger woman. Co-created/written by Sam Levinson, a creep who’s mostly known for a controversial tv show that overly sexualizes teenagers (but it’s ok! They’re actually played by 20-somethings that just happen to look young).
Yeah, he’s a creep with delusions of grandeur.
This whole show is revolting and has zero redeemability. Good luck trying,Abel. I am now going to call him The Monday because I actually have come to dread hearing about him and his shit show.
@K omg, love this comment 😂
You know I had a feeling he was going to go into acting when I noticed he got veneers. His original teeth were fine, but most of Hollywood has perfect teeth. I haven’t watched his show, but I do like his music and hope he continues to make more songs.
I said it on Twitter and I will say it here: he reminds me of a claymation doll in a stop action film. But also it’s hilarious that he’s now saying this when the whole premise of the show that his character is so charismatic that he essentially starts his own cult. It also doesn’t explain the fact that he simply CAN’T ACT.
just imagine they’re making a statement about lily-rose’s dad. it all makes sense to me.
I have a feeling he’s just playing himself. Pun intended
So they totally remade this show, spending tons of millions of dollars to focus on his character, a non-charismatic loser.
Sure, Jan.
Unpopular opinion, but I’m
loving the show. The characters are super campy and engaging, it’s shot beautifully, i think the acting and the story is a lot more layered than what comes across in interviews. My only gripe is that that it sometimes feels like they’re presenting a stereotype of kink-as-an-expression-of-mental-illness, but even so the sex is a whole lot more consensual than say, 50 shades…. Im looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Abel is deluded. The character of Tedros is intentionally uncharismatic, according to him.
What he means is he’s playing a character that’s supposed to seem charismatic to those around him, but we (the audience) know he’s actually a loser.
Because If he’s supposed to seem like an uncharismatic loser to those around him – why are they following him?
Not one cult leader that I know would be called “uncharismatic”. They were all disgusting monsters but what they had to offer was charisma. Charles Manson, Keith Raniere, Jim Jones, Donald trump, Bill Gothlan etc. The one thing they do have is charisma.
He is mixing up the difference between the character of Tedros being uncharismatic to the characters around him in the story, and Abel’s acting being uncharismatic to the television audience.
Look at Alexander Skarsgaard from Succession. That is an example of a how a good actor plays an uncharismatic character. In the scenes, his character isn’t likeable, isn’t sociable, doesn’t articulate himself well, makes awkward jokes, sucks the energy out of the room, displays hubris, yet because Skarsgaard is a masterful artist, the character is incredibly watchable and unpredictable.
So Abel is saying Tedros isnt layered? Isn’t mysterious? Is just a basic loser that should be laughed at?
So then why do you want to play him? Why is his story something you want to tell in the first place, not to mention fire the show runner and director and rewrite the story to have more Tedros.