More than halfway through The Idol’s five-episode run, co-creator and director Sam Levinson has zoomed in on an idea that’s been integral to depictions of Hollywood for decades, from Sunset Boulevard to Somewhere, The Canyons, and The Neon Demon: It’s a place that will suck you dry. But the series’s muddled development of Tedros Tedros and the middling performance of series co-creator Abel “The Weeknd†Tesfaye have combined to render The Idol’s central vampire toothless.
Euphoria watchers know that Levinson’s specific style — a blend of hyper-stylized lighting, club-rat-fever-dream costuming, and long tracking shots — is usually in service of a narrative with some kind of carnal element. Given that track record, The Idol’s scenes of light bondage, oral sex in a convertible, and Valentino-dressing-room masturbation aren’t entirely surprising, nor are they as kinky as the erotic-thriller genre The Idol itself nods to in the premiere when Jocelyn and best friend-slash-assistant Leia (Rachel Sennott) watch Basic Instinct. However jarringly raunchy these moments are, The Idol’s attempt at edginess is not the issue (although some more male nudity would be nice, for equality’s sake). It’s the contradictory vagary around Tedros as a character, and Tesfaye’s one-note performance failing to elevate the thin writing of a baddie whom The Idol wants to both make fun of and have us fear. “Who is he?†Jocelyn asked when she first saw Tedros at his club, surrounded by women and hidden behind a huge pair of sunglasses that he, per The Weeknd’s own custom, wears inside. The Idol can’t make up its mind.
Aside from the meta gimmickry of a major pop star playing someone who covets a major pop star, there’s nothing yet convincing about Tesfaye’s portrayal of Tedros Tedros, the “sketchy as fuck†cult leader who “doesn’t seem to exist†but quickly ensnares Jocelyn in his web. Tedros is introduced as inscrutable, unknowable, and playing a role: We see him trying out grins in the mirror and practicing the flirtatious “Hello, Angel†line before he uses both on Jocelyn. We learn from Jocelyn’s manager Destiny (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) that his background is murky, and when Destiny and co-manager Chaim (Hank Azaria) confront Tedros about where he’s from, they clock his opaque answers about where he grew up and where he went to school. We know that Tedros is a liar once it’s revealed that Dyanne (BLACKPINK’s Jennie), who invited Jocelyn to Tedros’s club in the first place, is a member of his cult and is illicitly undermining Jocelyn’s career. And it’s made very plain through Jocelyn’s conversations with Tedros’s other clients Izaak (Moses Sumney) and Chloe (Suzanna Son) that he’s a domineering, pushy, and devious figure who doesn’t let them say no, views Jocelyn as his property, and rationalizes all manner of personal tragedy as fodder for art.
All of that makes for a figure The Idol wants us to perceive as intimidating — Destiny and Chaim agree that Jocelyn is in “danger†around Tedros — but also a bit of a loser. In “Daybreak,†Tedros pouts when Jocelyn teasingly calls him gay, looks awkward when jacking off, and mispronounces “carte blanche†(and not in a cute way, like Channing Tatum in 22 Jump Street). But she simply can’t stay away, begging him to spank her and choke her in public places. Those two extremely oppositional characterizations don’t make for a compelling figure, but rather a confusing one.
“There’s nothing really mysterious or hypnotizing about him,†Tesfaye told GQ about the character. But then why portray Tedros as a smiling temptation bathed in red light, an ominous enemy at Jocelyn’s gates, and a mastermind torturer who wields power over a talented, committed group of people? There’s a gap between Tesfaye’s explanation of his performance and how The Idol has positioned Tedros, and it’s as puzzling as Jocelyn’s belief that her moan-filled remix of “World Class Sinner†could ever get radio airplay.
Jocelyn’s decision-making becomes illogical once Tedros enters her life, but Lily-Rose Depp gives the character a core of elemental exhaustion that contrasts nicely with her unexpected wryness, like when she shrugs at Tedros’s complaint about not being able to ejaculate inside her: “I don’t know. Figure it out.†Depp’s approach strengthens the series’s weaker writing, as in a startlingly devastating sequence in second episode “Double Fantasy†where a beleaguered Jocelyn, crumpled on stage with wounded feet from too-tight heels, calls out for her mother, acknowledges that she knows that her mother is dead, and then keeps asking for her. The Idol is notably incurious about the rest of Jocelyn’s life outside of her pain and her celebrity, yet Depp has a solid enough presence that we care about her personal and professional survival. Her choices, even the ones we perceive as short-sighted, are made with determined certainty — the increasing looseness of her body language when they dance together for the first time to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,†the curl of her smile when she agrees to let Tedros move in. And then there’s Tesfaye, stiff, superficial, and not at all reaching the level of Depp’s work.
Admittedly, Tedros is a tricky ask: Embody the nefariousness we’re told he’s capable of, while also making him attractive and trustworthy to both his followers and to Jocelyn, while also making him a braggadocious poser whose gaucheness is a source of humor. Finding that balance requires the nuance to convey both an external agenda and an internal motivation, and the ability to move fluidly between the two. Tesfaye, however, plays all his scenes in the same register, with the same tone, the same cadence, and the same body language. This man sure does love to tilt his head to the side to deliver an emphatic message! There’s no discernible variation between how Tedros tells a nude and thrusting Izaak, whom he punishes through a shock collar, that “You’re not a human, Izaak, don’t forget. You’re a fucking star†and how he tells Jocelyn that she can share her memories of her mother’s violence because nothing would “make me love you any less.†One is a scene in which he’s being his authentic scheming self and one is a scene in which he’s being his performative supportive self, but who could tell? There are certainly times where Tedros comes off as a corny tryhard, but his immediately outsized, physically and emotionally brutal presence in Jocelyn’s life make him a danger; that’s the series’s entire driving tension.
Of the lengthy sex scene between Tedros and Jocelyn in “Double Fantasy,†Tesfaye told GQ, “This guy is in way over his head, this situation is one where he is not supposed to be here.†But if that uncertainty is supposed to come through in Tesfaye’s performance, it doesn’t. As Levinson zooms in on Tedros and later cuts to him in closeup, Tesfaye’s face remains immobile, his eyes flat, his line deliveries stilted as he describes his “fat tongue†on Jocelyn’s body. Is he aroused or detached? Smug or bored? Shouldn’t there be some sense of what Tedros is feeling or thinking, communicated to us through Tesfaye? Without any chemistry between Depp and Tesfaye, and with too many of Levinson’s directorial flourishes — Depp’s body reduced to abstract parts, the frame sliced into doubled reflections from the bedroom’s many mirrors — the scene becomes unclear, whatever power games meant to be happening between Jocelyn and Tedros reduced to another opportunity for Depp to strip and bend over. An inverse issue arises in the dressing-room sex scene in “Daybreak,†where Depp’s moans sound so artificial and Tesfaye’s slapping of her face looks so silly that whatever eroticism was meant to be here dries up. The series’s insistence that Tedros is both a washed-up dork forced to orgasm into his own hands and a psychological puppet master who sways Jocelyn to hand over the figurative and literal keys to her life is as skimpy an argument as one of those garishly shiny Valentino outfits.
The Idol has a lot on its mind, and some of its questions and themes feel like they could be well-explored by Levinson as our elder-millennial Bret Easton Ellis: the destructive nature of endless encouraged ambition; the tension between female sexuality and male alienation; the sacrifice of one’s personal well-being for creative success; the American desire for more — more money, more sex, more fame, more life. But with Tedros so paradoxically nonsensical and Tesfaye as Depp’s primary scene partner, two major parts of this series feel like they’re never going to click. It’s simply not working for The Weeknd.
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