‘The Idol’ Team Responds to Rolling Stone Expose: ‘They Can Write Whatever They Want’

Lily-Rose Depp and Sam Levinson defended The Idol at a Cannes press conference following its premiere, pushing back against a recent Rolling Stone report that contained numerous troubling claims about the show’s content and production environment.

Back in March, Rolling Stone published an extensive report about the HBO limited series, which stars Depp and the Weeknd (a.k.a Abel Tesfaye), with Levinson (the creator of Euphoria) at the helm. Interviews with 13 members of the show’s cast and crew revealed claims that the show’s on-set working conditions were often chaotic and that the series had taken a dark turn. One source described some potential scenes as “sexual torture porn,” while another said the show went from “a dark satire of fame and the fame model” to “the thing it was satirizing.” 

One production member stated plainly: “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.” 

At Cannes, Depp, who’s previously pushed back against the report, said, “I just wanna say that it’s always sad and disheartening to hear mean, false things about someone you care about, and it wasn’t my experience shooting the show.”

Levinson, meanwhile, acknowledged that everyone knew they were making a “show that’s provocative.” He also said that his reaction to the piece, after his wife read it to him for the first time, was, “I think we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.” 

But Levinson added, “When I read the specifics, however, it just felt completely foreign to me. But I know who I am. There’s the work, and there’s the managing of the persona. And that is not interesting to me, because it takes away from the work.”

Levinson also issued the dubious retort, “They’re free to write whatever they want. My only gripe is that they intentionally omitted anything that didn’t fit their narrative. But there’s been a lot of that lately.” 

In fact, Rolling Stone did include statements from Depp, HBO, and a source close to the production, all of whom defended the series and on-set environment. “I think that was part of the huge success of our show, is that he was always approachable and he had the vision in his head,” one source said of Levinson.

Still, according to Rolling Stone’s reporting, a number of crew members insisted the direction and perspective of The Idol changed drastically after original director Amy Seimetz suddenly left and Levinson stepped in. Levinson’s scripts reportedly contained disturbing sexual and physically violent scenes between Depp and Tesfaye’s characters, three sources told Rolling Stone. As one person put it, “It was a show about a woman who was finding herself sexually, turned into a show about a man who gets to abuse this woman, and she loves it.” 

Prior to Cannes, Tesfaye responded to Rolling Stone’s report in an interview with Vanity Fair, saying he thought the article was “ridiculous.” He also somewhat addressed the dark nature of the show, saying, “I mean, this isn’t a secret. Hollywood is a dark place. Which makes for great art.” He also pushed back against a question tying the claims about The Idol to some of the disturbing themes that have long been a feature of his music.

Similarly, at Cannes, he quipped that the goal of the show was to “see if we could create our own pop star, using my experiences, using [Levinson’s] experiences, using Lily’s experiences from her point of view, to create something special, daring, exciting, fun, to make some people laugh and to piss some people off.”