The Idol is an American drama TV series created by Sam Levinson, Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye, and Reza Fahim for HBO. It stars Lily-Rose Depp and Tesfaye alongside an All-Star Cast including Troye Sivan, Jane Adams, Jennie Ruby Jane (of BLACKPINK fame), Rachel Sennott, Hari Nef, Moses Sumney, Dan Levy, Eli Roth, Hank Azaria, and Da'Vine Joy Randolph.
The series follows Jocelyn (Depp), a troubled starlet and aspiring pop idol, trying to stage her comeback as "the greatest and sexiest pop star in America" after the death of her mother and a mental breakdown that led to the cancellation of her last tour. As she fails to capture inspiration for her music, and one of her dancers seems to grab the interest of her own managerial crew, she meets and falls for a seductive self-help guru named Tedros (Tesfaye), who secretly heads a contemporary cult.
The series had a highly publicized Troubled Production. Development began in June 2021, with Amy Seimetz originally attached as the show's director. Seimetz eventually left the project in April 2022 due to scheduling conflicts, at which point Levinson took over directing duties. He scrapped the plans Seimetz had already mapped out for the series alongside the footage already filmed (reportedly 80% of the series), and the series underwent a "major" creative overhaul from the ground up, with production resuming in May 2022 in a different creative direction. Several sources have reported that Seimetz's version of the show would've been about a starlet "falling victim to a predatory industry figure and fighting to reclaim her own agency", and further claimed that a reason for the show's changes was Tesfaye's belief that Seimetz's work "lean[ed] too much into a female perspective."
The series premiered its first two episodes at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival on May 22 of that yearnote , and later aired on HBO and Max for one five-episode season between June 4 and July 2. On August 28, it was announced that the show was canceled.
Sam Levinson confirmed that The Idol exists in a Shared Universe with another HBO series of his creation, Euphoria.
I'm just a freak, yeah, so show me why you trope:
- Abusive Parents: Until her chemo started, Jocelyn's mom used to beat her with a hairbrush all over her body in order to "motivate" her. The finale implies this was a lie from Jocelyn and it's left unclear how good or bad she was as a mother, though Xander indicates that at least she was threatening to people who got in the way of Jocelyn's career.
- Agony of the Feet: During the filming of her new music video, Jocelyn's feet get horribly bloodied and bruised from the heels that she's wearing.
- Audience Shift: In-Universe. Jocelyn's breakdown has made her a hard sell to the teenage girls who are avid consumers of pop music, so her raunchier songs are trying to change her audience into something more mature.
- Beta Couple: Leia and Izaak, to the main romance between Jocelyn and Tedros.
- Big Bad: Tedros is the leader of the cult that Jocelyn gets involved in.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: After Xander reveals to Tedros that he was forced to end his music career because Jocelyn's mother threatened to out him, Tedros and Jocelyn hog-tie him and put a shock collar on him. They then proceed to torture him with the collar into recanting what he said, but it's clear that he only did this because he was desperate for the pain to stop. What makes it especially horrible is that Xander is Jocelyn's oldest friend, even knowing about the abuse she suffered, and yet she takes sadistic pleasure out of seeing him writhing in pain.
- Cult of Personality: Tedros has one, with a focus on musical talent. His cult involves using pain and traumatic experiences in order to create artistic works, including drilling in to never say no to new experiences — except when it crosses his orders. By the finale, Jocelyn has hijacked it and all the talented artists in it to become her opening numbers.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Tedros becomes very protective of Jocelyn very quickly, firing her personal chef for seemingly making a pass at her (he wasn't) and threatening a Valentino employee who makes the mistake of looking at her one second too long and for suggesting a few tops for her to wear.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The final scenes demonstrate Jocelyn was using Tedros the entire time. She lied about her mother having beaten her with the hairbrush and proceeds to emasculate him onstage, declaring she owns him forever and has him go stand in the corner while she receives adulation.
- Everyone Has Standards: Nikki is the most ruthless and confrontational among Jocelyn's managerial crew, promoting the viewpoint that her mental illness (and by extension her vulnerability) is what makes her sexy, and yelling at her for wanting to change her single. That said, when Jocelyn starts dissociating in the middle of her music video shoot, calling for her mom when she knows she is dead, even she has to call it quits and say that they can't make Jocelyn work anymore.
- Fair-Weather Friend: Nikki seems all over Dyanne and eager to push her as a pop star when she realizes that she can be easier to manage than Jocelyn, and plans to give her Jocelyn's song "World Class Sinner" as her debut single. However, when Jocelyn gets out of her funk and shows up not only with multiple songs ready and a party of musicians to follow her, but, impliedly, threatens to sue for using her song with another artist, Nikki completely halts her plans of helping Dyanne's career.
- False Rape Accusation: Tedros leaks false rumors that Jocelyn's ex-boyfriend was a rapist.
- Fanservice: There are numerous scenes of characters in various states of undress from revealing outfits to full nudity, most of them being women. Jocelyn is especially highlighted for her looks and body, and gets a number of intimate scenes with Tedros.
- Foreshadowing: Jocelyn's aggressive use of her hairbrush, an episode before the reveal of her mother's abuse of her with the hairbrush.
- In-Series Nickname: Everyone who's close to Jocelyn (Leia, her team, and eventually Tedros) calls her "Joss".
- Hapless Self-Help: Tedros is a self-help guru who preaches empowerment yet is the leader of a cult who tortures and sexually harasses people. And, in the end he's not even good at it; it's suggested that Jocelyn was manipulating him all along by lying about her Freudian Excuse.
- Horrible Hollywood: The entertainment world is portrayed as a machine that takes in young women like Jocelyn and exploits them for all they're worth before spitting them out.
- Kick the Dog: Tedros and Jocelyn torture and humiliate Xander into recanting information about Jocelyn's mother which is clearly true. It's especially cruel on Jocelyn's part, since her and Xander are childhood friends. After a while, she stops asking for the truth and just tells Tedros to keep shocking him, until he eventually gives in.
- Mad Artist: To a degree. Tedros created a cult of people insanely loyal to him who are all gifted musicians, but also gave them all the very somber idea that suffering for your art is for the better to the point they never say no to even very negative experiences like letting Tedros torture them.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: After Jocelyn and Tedros start to hook up, they begin having sex in different places — Jocelyn's home, her car, the store where she was trying on new clothes...
- Misery Builds Character: Part of Tedros' beliefs for his cult, that all traumatic events can create beautiful art. They even go as far as to say that it was for the better that Eric Clapton's son died, since that led him to writing "Tears in Heaven", a highly acclaimed and critically successful song.
- Must Have Nicotine: Jocelyn smokes all the time, in part to cope with the stresses of being a pop star.
- Mysterious Past: The only things known about Tedros' past is that his full name is Mauricio Costello Jackson and that he used to live in Hawaii. How he went on to form a cult and own a nightclub in LA is unclear.
- Non-Actor Vehicle: The show stars The Weeknd, who is primarily a singer, as Big Bad Tedros.
- Outgambitted: The finale reveals that Jocelyn was conning Tedros the whole time, while Tedros believed he was conning and controlling her. She just used him and his depraved lifestyle to help her find a new sound to stay relevant in the music business. Once Jocelyn does, she drops Tedros and takes all his artists he spent years gathering at his night club with her.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Jocelyn turns out to be doing this during the whole series until the finale's reveal. She acts like a damaged pop star with no control over her life, which allows people to use and manipulate her. While the damaged part is true to some degree, Jocelyn is well aware of the cutthroat business that she is in and knows how to play the game just as good as the other sharks in the entertainment industry. This is proven with how she completely played Tedros, stealing his nightclub artists and breaking him to her will, and how she stopped her mercenary agent Nikki from replacing her with Dyanne, one of her dancing partners behind the scenes.
- Parental Substitute: After Jocelyn's mother died, Chaim and Destiny decided to step in as her parental figures. It is partly a manipulation tactic given that, as her managers, their careers depend on her success, but their concern over her does seem to be genuine.
- Plot Hole: In the finale, Tedros finds the hairbrush Jocelyn's mother used to abuse her, and it turns out to be brand new, implying she lied about being abused with it. That being said, prior to that moment, Tedros had already seen the hairbrush, since Jocelyn gave it to him to use in a bondage session. Why wouldn't he have seen it was new then?
- Repetitive Name: Chaim dug into Tedros' past to find out that, among other things, his full name is Tedros Tedros.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Leia in the finale after she realizes Jocelyn wasn't an innocent victim of Tedros, but just as much of a Manipulative Bastard, if not moreso, than him.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The final fates of Dyanne and Leia are not told in the finale. Both seem to have simply left the story.
