‘The Idol’ Creators: ‘This Is Not Going to Be for All people’

Last month, the director Sam Levinson and his stars, Abel Tesfaye (a.ok.a. the Weeknd) and Lily-Rose Depp, walked into the Lumière Theater on the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of the primary two episodes of their present, “The Idol,” to a standing ovation. The lights hadn’t but dimmed, however celeb fuels Cannes, the place ovations are low cost. By the time the screening was over, the amped-up crowd was on its ft once more and critics have been racing out to fireside off a few of the most scathing critiques to emerge from this yr’s occasion, with pans studded with barbs like “regressive,” “chauvinistic,” “skin-crawling” and “grim disaster.”

“The Idol” facilities on a chart-busting pop star, Jocelyn (Depp), who, within the wake of a nervous breakdown, is prepping for a comeback. Surrounded by handlers — the solid consists of Hank Azaria, Troye Sivan, Jane Adams, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and the horror-film impresario Eli Roth — Jocelyn has made some huge cash for lots of self-interested folks. One night time at a Los Angeles dance membership, she meets Tedros (Tesfaye), a smooth-talking enigma with a rattail. Before lengthy, she has invited him again to her mansion and so they’re grinding within the shadows, and a thriller has taken root: What on the earth is she doing with this man?

Created by Levinson, Tesfaye and Reza Fahim, “The Idol,” which premieres on Sunday, was already a heat-seeking goal by the time it performed at Cannes. In April 2022, phrase hit that its unique director, Amy Seimetz, had left the present amid a inventive overhaul. For no matter cause, the mind belief at HBO determined to pump up the present’s notoriety in a teaser, launched three months later, that trumpeted Levinson and Tesfaye as “the sick & twisted minds” behind “the sleaziest love story in all of Hollywood.” But undesirable consideration arrived this previous March in a damning Rolling Stone article that, amongst different rebukes, accused Levinson’s model of being “a rape fantasy.” That teaser has since disappeared from HBO’s YouTube channel.

Levinson, Tesfaye and different “Idol” collaborators have vigorously defended the present and its creators. “The course of on the set was unbelievably inventive,” Azaria mentioned at a news conference a day after the Cannes premiere, as Adams nodded alongside. “I’ve been on many, many a dysfunctional set, consider me,” Azaria continued. “This was the precise reverse.”