Max’s The Idol, with director Sam Levinson, is currently going viral for all the wrong reasons, one of them being that the director indicated The Weeknd to film an “extremely disturbing” scene with co-star Lily-Rose Depp.
Sam Levinson’s new show with The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp has gone wildly, disgustingly off the rails. There have been numerous several cast and crew members who voiced their concerns about the series even before it hit the HBO platform.
Now, a month after its release, The Idol is now back in the news for a disturbing scene. According to Page Six, who released the report,
An eyewitness told the outlet that they shot “non-consensual semen scene” for last Sunday’s episode of the HBO drama series. However, they cut it from the final edit.
The two actors were filming a sex scene in the bathroom of the Grammy winner’s real-life Bel Air mansion when Levinson gave impromptu instructions.
The Emmy-winning Euphoria creator “explicitly directed” the character of Tedros to “strangle” the character of Jocelyn and ejaculate “inside her without her consent.” The spy makes sure to clarify that Tesfaye himself “did not literally” ejaculate inside Depp.
Levinson was allegedly “by the monitor, laughing and feeding lines to Abel’s character, like, ‘I own you,‘” the source continued to the news outlet.
Though both Tesfaye, 33, and Depp, 24, “went along with Sam’s direction,” the insider claims the majority of those on set found the scene “extremely disturbing.”
A second source, who confirms the scene was filmed, revealed the idea was “originally set up to lead to a pregnancy scare for Jocelyn and ultimately was cut because of storyline adjustments, which is a normal part of the creative process on a television series.”
Not Doing Very Well With the Public, Either
The HBO Max show stars superstar The Weekend, real name Abel Tesfaye, who portrays sleazy club owner Tedros in the show, while Lily-Rose plays a rising pop star named Jocelyn.
Following its release, the five-episode drama has an incredibly low score on Rotten Tomatoes – 25%, and 5.1 on IMDb, with lots of complaints due to its graphic and degrading content.
At the time of press, it’s unclear whether the network will renew The Idol for Season 2.
