Now that it’s officially Women’s History Month, HBO is kicking off the celebrations with its upcoming drama The Idol, which reportedly switched hands from a woman director to a man because the original approach focused too much on the “female perspective.” Susan B. Anthony would be so proud.
This week, some of the production staff on the highly-anticipated limited series, starring Lily-Rose Depp and R&B superstar Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd), unloaded lots of frustration about the changes that unfolded when The Idol’s original director, Amy Seimetz, was replaced by Euphoria’s Sam Levinson. Rolling Stone reports that Seimetz left the show in April 2022, as did one of the female leads, after having completed “roughly 80%” of the six total episodes. At that point, The Idol underwent top-to-bottom rewrites and was entirely re-shot by Levinson, who, according to reports, pushed for the overhaul alongside Tesfaye because they felt the show centered too much on its women characters — a totally valid complaint in Hollywood, where the Strong Female Lead has grown too strong for her own good and has actually started toppling skyscrapers and eating executives for breakfast.
Rolling Stone claims 13 sources — all of whom are unnamed — shared that, with Seimetz out of the way, Levinson was essentially given a “blank check” from HBO to completely transform the show from its intended satire of the entertainment industry’s sexist toxicity to a blueprint of that toxicity itself. The series, created by Levinson and Tesfaye, follows a vulnerable young pop star, portrayed by Depp, at the height of her career. As she deals with the fall-out of a nervous breakdown, she tumbles into the orbit of a magnetic nightclub owner and cult leader, played by Tesfaye, who drags her into his underworld.
Rolling Stone describes draft episodes that were supposedly proposed after Seimetz’s departure, some of which have crew members accusing Levinson of turning the show into “torture porn.” One of those drafts, which was never shot, was going to allegedly involve Tesfaye “bashing in” Depp’s face, making her character smile and ask to be beaten more, “giving Tesfaye an erection.” Another involved Tesfaye’s character refusing to “rape” her despite her “begging” him to because “she believed he was the key to her success.”
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Season four of “You” is going chastity modeAnonymous crew members worry that the show is headed down the Euphoria path, Levinson’s other series that received criticism for its gratuitous sexualization of teenage characters. Production staffers on The Idol say they were excited about the show’s original premise, “about a woman who was finding herself sexually,” but now have conflicting feelings as it’s become “about a man who gets to abuse this woman and she loves it.”
“It’s almost such an extreme that it’s like, there is no message,” one Idol crew member told Rolling Stone. “There is no point. They’re just trying to see how much of a reaction they can get.”
Because there are conflicting reports about several elements of the Rolling Stone article, questions about Levinson’s intentions remain largely unanswered. Most people involved in the highest levels of production have refused to comment on the situation, including Seimetz. Depp released a statement calling Levinson “the best director” she’s ever worked with, saying she has never “felt more supported or respected in a creative space.” Tesfaye refused to comment, instead sharing a mocking post on social media of one of the show’s teaser trailers with the caption: “Rolling Stone did we upset you?”
And it’s those teaser trailers, of which there are three, that the public will have to base its opinions on for the foreseeable future, as HBO has not yet set a release date for the actual show. So far, based solely on those three-minute clips, the “female perspective” does appear to take a backseat. In the third teaser video, Depp utters a total of 14 words between flashy takes of silent hip-gyrating and cleavage-bearing, compared to Tesfaye, whose domineering character utters more than double that count. But what he actually says I’ll never know; I learned to tune out the male perspective long ago.
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