‘The Idol’ Is A Bust: Critics Slam This “Sordid Male Fantasy,” Calling It “50 Shades of Tesfaye” After Cannes Premiere

After mounting public speculation and gossip, the first two episodes of The Idol premiered at Cannes Film Festival this week, and the reviews are in: it’s as bad as we feared.

Created by Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye and Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, The Idol follows Jocelyn (played by Depp), a pop star who is trying to reinvent herself after experiencing a psychological breakdown. But, surrounded by a team of protective yes-men, the star becomes desperate to take ownership of her music and image. In steps Tesfaye’s character, Tedros Tedros, a club owner and manager who is described as “rape-y” on the show.

“‘The Idol’ or 50 SHADES OF TESFAYE: A Pornhub-homepage odyssey starring Lily Rose Depp’s areolas and The Weeknd’s greasy rat tail. Love that this will help launch the HBO Max rebrand, should slot nicely next to House Hunters!” New York Times reporter Kyle Buchanan tweeted after the premiere.

Reviews from Variety, Deadline, and Vulture echoed similar ideas: The Idol is “highly sexualized,” and a “sordid male fantasy” that features quite a bit of nudity from Depp’s exploited character.

According to multiple social accounts, the show features many shots of sex and masturbation, but it also includes a photo of Jocelyn with semen on her face that went viral, and a scene where Tedros wraps a silk robe around her head and cuts a hole for her mouth to sing through (?), among other questionable moments.

“While it’s tempting to say that everything you’ve heard about it is true, that may be soft-selling how skin-crawling the experience of actually watching this satire (?) on the seven circles of showbiz hell is,” Rolling Stone‘s David Fear wrote in their review of the show. “The double-dose the festival screened felt nasty, brutish, much longer than it is, and way, way worse than you’d have anticipated.”

Reviews compared the show’s level of nudity to Euphoria, noting that it feels in line with Levinson’s proclivity for “young, beautiful women sobbing off their avant-garde eye makeup,” as Vulture‘s Rachel Handler noted.

On the other hand, Deadline deemed Depp’s performance “riveting,” writing that she seems completely “game” with what the show demands of her.

Back in March, a damning report from Rolling Stone alleged that the show had been remade into a “rape fantasy” and “sexual torture porn” by Tesfaye and Levinson. Though it contained reports from 13 anonymous crew members, Tesfaye denied the allegations and called the report “ridiculous.”

Per Variety, Levinson addressed the report while speaking at the Cannes press conference, saying, “When my wife read me the article, I looked at her and said, ‘I think we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.'”

The Idol certainly sets out to satirize the horny, dark-sided music industry that Tesfaye knows well, but the question is whether it succeeds. By the look of these initial reviews, all signs point to no.

The Idol is slated to premiere on Max on June 4.