The Weeknd Has More To Say About The Alleged Messiness On “The Idol” As Well As Leaving His Stage Name Behind

There have been a few claims that HBO’s upcoming glossy trauma porn project, The Idol, has been a behind-the-scenes mess from the very beginning. And  The Weeknd, who’s preparing to discard his stage name for his original Canadian alias Abel Tesfaye, has spoken about the bad press on numerous occasions for the past few months. But now he’s ready to spill his guts to finally tell his side of the story. And since we already know he’ll never talk to Rolling Stone, he chose Vanity Fair for his gabfest, which included slapping away at rumors of The Idol‘s toxic work environment and also giving a bit more insight as to why The Weeknd is finally coming to an end.

For the majority of the article, The Weeknd gives himself a pristine tug job while discussing his affinity for all things dark and twisty, including his music. He also goes into detail about Rolling Stone’s article that claims that work on The Idol was dark and twisty, leading original director Amy Seimetz to save her tears for the car as she drove far away from that fuckery. Amy was replaced by walking slime patch Sam Levinson, and when you throw him into the mix, the amount of red flags is now as high as Mt. Everest. But The Weeknd claims the narratives surrounding The Idol are false, and he wants to clear a few things up.

“I thought the article was ridiculous,” Tesfaye said of the Rolling Stone story. “I wanted to give a ridiculous response to it.” (Hours after the story was published, Tesfaye posted a clip from The Idol in which Tedros derides the magazine as irrelevant.)

That said, he objected to every aspect of it. “I actually really loved working with Amy,” Tesfaye said, “and I’m sure she’s reading all this being like, Why am I being thrown into this?” He said that logistical difficulties with Seimetz’s schedule and production timelines, as well as a desire not to rush his first show, propelled the overhaul. “Shows get reshot every day,” he added. (A rep said Seimetz couldn’t be reached for comment.)

“I know it’s easy for people to be like, Oh, he wanted to be the star,” he continued. He insisted that the show remains grounded in Depp’s perspective as the lead and that he’d always written it that way—and that he didn’t want to play her counterpart until Levinson and others convinced him.

Another thing he wants to make clear is that although he will be leaving his stage name behind, he still plans on making music. He says his high-pitched drug-loving partyboi persona of The Weeknd is just that, a persona, and there’s way more he has to offer.

Tesfaye’s ambitions remain elusive. In addition to The Idol, he’s costarring with Jenna Ortega in an untitled movie that he cowrote with Fahim and Trey Edward Shults, who is directing. Fans invested in the long character arc of his music may be disappointed.

“If I direct, that’s all I’m gonna do,” Tesfaye said. “I’m not going to be The Weeknd.”

I hope he sticks to using his government name since I’ve always hated the false advertisement behind The Weeknd. Because when I think of the weekend, I think of fun. But with him, everything was always misery, pain, and high-pitched squealing. And those aren’t the kinds of things I want to be incorporated into any part of my week.

Pic: Mark Seliger/Vanity Fair