Abel “the Weekend” Tesfaye responded to Rolling Stone’s report claiming his highly-anticipated HBO show, The Idol, “has gone wildly, disgustingly off the rails.” But the superstar did not refute some of the article’s disturbing claims — like that he and co-creator, Euphoria‘s Sam Levinson, are making a series depicting “sexual torture porn” — but instead, fired off a video calling the publication uncool. While sources tell Yahoo Entertainment that some of the content in the RS story “is pretty accurate,” others paint a different picture of what’s been going on behind-the-scenes.
On Wednesday afternoon, Tesfaye tweeted a clip from The Idol of his and Lily-Rose Depp’s characters calling RS “irrelevant.” In the series, the singer plays a modern-day cult leader named Tedros while Depp is Jocelyn, his pop star love interest. The clip shows them talking to an agent type (played by Dan Levy) who’s trying to convince Jocelyn to shoot a cover for the magazine.
“I feel like it might be kind of past its prime,” says Jocelyn.
“Yeah, nobody cares about Rolling Stone,” adds Tedros.
Tesfaye, who has over 17 million followers on Twitter, tagged RS and wrote, “Did we upset you?”
https://twitter.com/theweeknd/status/1631045507471605760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1631045507471605760%7Ctwgr%5Ea34a346d42ebcc781cbe5c67d732eb770e495884%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com%2Fentertainment%2Fthe-weeknd-lily-rose-depp-idol-torture-porn-report-190029928.html
On Wednesday morning, RS posted its story “The Idol: How HBO’s Next Euphoria Became Twisted ‘Torture Porn.'” The article featured interviews with 13 members of the show’s cast and crew, all of whom remained anonymous. They dished about the alleged havoc that’s ensued since Levinson took the reins from director Amy Seimetz during a shakeup last spring.
“It was, let’s just say, a s***show,” one person claimed.
While the article detailed how the production’s been plagued by reshoots and rewrites, causing serious delays, the disturbing accusations involve the shift in content.
Four sources alleged Levinson’s created a degrading love story that multiple crew members found offensive. Seimetz’s version was more “about a troubled starlet falling victim to a predatory industry figure and fighting to reclaim her own agency.” Now, one production member claimed: “It was like any rape fantasy that any toxic man would have in the show — and then the woman comes back for more because it makes her music better.
