Lily-Rose Depp and The Weeknd are wasted in lurid, sleazy HBO show The Idol

Everyone had high hopes for The Idol – starring Johnny Depp’s daughter and The Weeknd – but critics say it’s too sleazy for the MeToo age.

French-US actress Lily-Rose Depp poses during a photocall for the film "The Idol" at the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 23, 2023. (Photo by Valery HACHE / AFP)

It was supposed to be the next big thing. The successor to Succession, the sexiest and cleverest and most opulent show ever put on television. So why does everyone hate HBO’s The Idol?

It’s hard to think of any piece of content that has been so dissected and so trashed in either film or TV for a long, long time. On Rotten Tomatoes – the film/TV critic bible of the internet – it has one of the lowest scores ever. It’s been scoured by nearly every major TV writer in America and it’s been lambasted on social media.

But surely this new prestige series starring Lily-Rose Depp (daughter of film icon Johnny Depp and supermodel Vanessa Paradis) as a screwed up, gorgeous, doomed pop star should have it all?

The Idol is about a pop star (Depp) who has had a nervous breakdown. She is trying to get back on her feet for her next tour when she falls into the hands of a creepy self-help guru, played by Abel Tesfaye – the artist formerly known as The Weeknd.

Depp is simply stunning, she’s got her parents’ charisma, and she’s not a bad actress at all. Tesfaye, her co-star, in real life is one of the biggest and most desired musicians around.

The show is commandeered by Sam Levinson – the man who reinvented teen drama for a Gen Z world with the brilliant Euphoria.

And it’s got an excellent cast – legendary comedian Hank Azaria, Schitt’s Creek’s Dan Levy, and Australia’s hottest young actor/singer Troye Sivan.

So the argument for the defence?

The show never had a chance, it was cancelled by social media way before it ever made TV screens this week.

The show’s original director, Amy Seimetz, was reportedly dumped at Tesfaye’s request for “leaning too much into the female perspective” and trying to make The Idol a show about a young rocker girl fighting to get her agency back. Levinson took over, rewrote and reshot the whole show, and added in plenty of sex scenes and nudity while he was at it.

A whole controversy over whether a woman was shafted to allow two men to make a show more geared towards dudes – and the sexual gratification of dudes – is not going to help any show in this puritan MeToo age. And the suggestion from the show’s defenders is that the two blokes – Levinson and Tesfaye – have been unfairly attacked by on-set allies of Seimetz, who were peeved she left and so they took trumped-up claims of misogyny to Rolling Stone and others to cancel the show.

Abel 'The Weeknd' Tesfaye. (Photo by Sebastien Nogier/Pool/Getty Images)

The case for the prosecution? The Idol is one of the most jarring, disconnected, confused shows you’ll ever see.

It has no idea what it wants to be, and you don’t need to know about The Idol’s backstage drama to grasp that fact.

Levinson and Tesfaye did not eliminate the female struggle from their rewrite, to be fair to them. Depp is rather good in the quiet moments when she’s doubting herself and her music, when she’s trying to argue for creative control and control of her body, when everyone around is trying to keep her in a cage.

The most farcical and troubling scene in the first episode is when her entourage find out a picture of Depp has leaked to the internet – engaging in an act one would not publish in the national broadsheet – andboldly lie to her face about its existence.

And you have Sivan acting as a sort of moral conscience in a risqué photo shoot while the older female record label boss (Jane Adams) is actually the one pushing sex, sex, sex at all times.

But then Tesfaye enters the picture and any attempts at low-tempo pop satire disappear. Then it’s all gratuitous sex – a scene with an ice cube is particularly lurid – and extra loud background music and bad scriptwriting.

It doesn’t help that Tesfaye, who’s supposed to be the sexiest man in the entire world, has little sex appeal in front of a camera and not much in the way of acting chops.

It’s almost like the original feminist cut appears for the 30 minutes of episode one of The Idol, and then we’re straight to the fellas’ more pornographic reinvention.

Troye Sivan, Rachel Sennott, Jennie Kim and Lily-Rose Depp in The Idol. Foxtel 2023

Not to mention that the production itself is jarring. The editing in the show is terrible. The music and sound is all over the shop and the lighting is insane.

The music cuts from White Lotus-esque baroque melodrama to pornographic pop to quiet kitchen sink drama. All in the space of 50 minutes.

The Idol is just very hard to watch.

Yet the Idol does have some redeeming qualities. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is very funny as the pop star’s manager and Rachel Sennott is good as the best mate trying to keep Depp’s feet on the ground. Sivan is a talent.

And Depp herself is a star. She should have been treated better in her big debut.

But The Idol doesn’t work. It’s lurid and sleazy. And it looks like the blokes are to blame.

The Idol is now airing on Binge.