The Weeknd’s New Show ‘The Idol’ Already Pissed Off the Whole Internet
This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by editor Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
Before everyone discovered just how problematic and potentially disastrous production for the new HBO series The Idol has been, the show already seemed exhausting. Now, after a tumultuous day involving a damning Rolling Stone investigation and a cringe-inducing, petulant reaction from a celebrity who should know better, the Weeknd and Euphoria creator Sam Levinson’s HBO collaboration has become the most reviled project on the internet—which is impressive, given no one even knows yet when it might be released.
Hollywood typically trades in controlled chaos: firestorms, tornados, and avalanches of potential calamity caused by outsized egos, amplified by ungodly amounts of money. Miraculously, all of that is reined in by the army of publicists, handlers, and crisis managers, who work frantically to make sure that the public only finds out what they want us to know. When that typically shrouded havoc sees the light, the way it has with The Idol, it’s alarming to a point that approaches unsettling.