Riding a wave of buzz and controversy all the way to a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, HBO’s inflammatory new series The Idol immediately proved that people rising and clapping is not a guarantee of quality.
In fact, even though the show’s Rotten Tomatoes score has risen to a still-terrible 25 percent, it set a record as the worst-reviewed episodic original in the outfit’s history when it hit a low of nine percent on the aggregation site. Hate-watching has been discouraged, and by all accounts the salacious series isn’t so bad it’s good, but just plain terrible on every level.
Given the widespread volume of sex, drugs, debauchery, and other near-the-knuckle activity that unfolds throughout, going method during production sounds like the most insane thing in the world. Mercifully, then, star Lily-Rose Depp confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that it didn’t happen, although she did hint The Weeknd was taking his stint as a thespian very seriously.
“I don’t think anybody went full method — nobody lost their minds. Well, sometimes when Abel would get — I don’t want to reveal too much about where Abel’s character goes, but when he would be in full Tedros mode sometimes, I would steer clear of him. I’d be like, ‘He’s in his zone right now.'”
It would be safe to say The Idol is either in danger of being remembered for all the wrong reasons or forgotten in an instant, but based on some of its shocking content, we can only thank the stars that nobody wanted to cast Jared Leto or Jeremy Strong.