"Blinding Lights" hitmaker The Weeknd has taken cognisance of a recent report by Rolling Stone on his upcoming series and has responded. The music star responded to a report from Rolling Stone claiming that his upcoming series The Idol created with Euphoria's Sam Levinson, has "gone wildly, disgustingly off the rails", reports Variety. Posting a clip from the series to Instagram, Abel 'The Weeknd' Tesfaye tagged Rolling Stone and wrote, "Did we upset you?" The Weeknd Lands His First Feature Film Role Opposite Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan in Trey Edwards Shults’ Untitled Project.

In the scene, a character played by Dan Levy pitches Tesfaye and Lily-Rose Depp's pop star character Jocelyn to do a photo shoot for the cover of Rolling Stone. Tesfaye, who plays a modern-day cult leader named Tedros, says, "Rolling Stone? Aren't they a little irrelevant? ... Rolling Stone has 6 million followers on Instagram, half of them probably bots. And Jocelyn has 78 million followers, all real I'd assume. So she does a photo shoot, she tags them, they get her followers. More money for Rolling Stone, nothing for Jocelyn."

Noah Shachtman Responds to The Weeknd 

"There's a lot for Jocelyn," Levy's character says, to which Tesfaye's character responds, "Not in Rolling Stone". When asked for comment, Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman pointed to his Twitter reply to Tesfaye, saying: "Not at all!" when asked "Did we upset you?" As per Variety, HBO is also disputing Rolling Stone's story, titled 'The Idol': How HBO's Next 'Euphoria' Became Twisted 'Torture Porn', which claims that the show is in turmoil due to a poor working environment, last-minute script rewrites and budgetary issues. The Idol's Revised Script Had Shocking Scene Where Lily-Rose Depp Carries Egg in Her Vagina - Reports.

'The Idol' first showed signs of trouble when director Amy Seimetz suddenly exited the show in April 2022 with several of the six episodes already completed. Variety reported last year that the series would be overhauled "with changes to its cast and crew - due to a change in creative directions". Reports at the time claimed that Tesfaye felt the series was leaning too much into a "female perspective". As Rolling Stone reports, Levinson then took over as director, "scrapping the nearly-finished $54-75 million project to rewrite and reshoot the entire thing".

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 02, 2023 09:39 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).