Lily-Rose Depp Discusses Her Role on 'The Idol' and The Weeknd Being "the Best Partner"
The series premieres in June.
For months, The Idol has been a hot topic. Lily-Rose Depp has shared more details about the forthcoming HBO series, which also stars The Weeknd aka Abel Makkonen Tesfaye.
Depp plays Jocelyn, an aspiring pop star who must navigate through the lifestyle, which includes sex, drugs and other challenges within the music industry. Depp feels proud of her work for the character. “I’ve dreamt of roles like this for forever,” she recently told i-D. “I just don’t think that you could give an actress a greater gift than a role like this. This has been the most meaningful and important project that I’ve ever done, and the thing that I’m the proudest of. I don’t know where to begin. Jocelyn is the most wonderfully complex character. She’s so fascinating. A mystery. After a year of living with that character, I’m still obsessed with her. I just want to keep digging deeper.”
For the role, Depp was inspired by pop stars like Britney Spears and Beyoncé. However, she also looked into other artists from different eras. “I thought about movie stars of the ’40s, like Lauren Bacall and Gene Tierney,” she added. “They did not walk into a room and descend to anybody else’s level to try and make them feel comfortable. They almost had this confidence in the discomfort that they could provoke in people. A thing of, ‘This is who I am, and I’m not going to change.’”
Fortunately, The Weeknd, who plays her love interest, helped her bring Jocelyn to life. “Talk about trust and comfort,” she said. “I had to go to a lot of really vulnerable places in the show. Abel was the best partner that I could have ever asked for. He has my back and I have his. I just felt so free and liberated, so empowered.”
The Idol premieres on HBO in June.
