It’s safe to say that critics didn’t much enjoy Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye’s TV creation The Idol.
The show, which starred the musician himself alongside Lily-Rose Depp, was branded “chauvinistic” and “shameful” early on after mixed Cannes reviews; it was called out for its “tasteless” Jeffrey Epstein joke, and critics roundly tore apart its finale.
Now, Lily-Rose Depp has opened up about the “upsetting” feedback on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
Speaking to host Josh Horowitz about the now-cancelled show, the actor said: “I think the thing that sucked about that was to have people talking s*** about Sam [Levinson, the show’s controversial director], who is a great friend of mine and somebody that I consider family.”
The Idol’s director, who took over from Amy Seimetz after she left The Idol in 2022, had been accused of going “off the rails” by 13 of the show’s cast and crew members in a 2023 Rolling Stone article.
But Lily, who publicly stood up for Sam when the Rolling Stone article came out, stressed how “close” she was with the director in the recent podcast episode, saying: “I’m super close with him and Ashley [Levinson] — his wife who’s a producer on the show — and they are such wonderful people, like, so incredible, so kind, and really kind of took me under their wing in a way.”
“The only thing that was upsetting about that whole time period was people talking negatively about him, because the things that they said about him, particularly, as a filmmaker, just couldn’t be further from the truth than from, at least, my experience working with him,” she commented on the podcast.
“So that sucks. You just never want to hear people talking s*** about your friend.”
Still, Lily says she stands by her character on the show, singer Joceyln.
“People are always gonna make their own opinions of things, and so you just have to be steadfast in your conviction of, like, ‘I know why I’m doing this,’ and I know why I did that,” she commented on Happy Sad Confused.
She added: “In a way, it was surreal, and not because we always knew it was going to be controversial… you’ve gotta be expecting that in a way, and that’s okay. I’m interested in that kind of work.
“I’m down for that. I think we were also, like, pushing society’s buttons intentionally a little bit, in a way, and of course, it was received in the way that it was, but it’s okay.”