The Weeknd says the sex scenes in The Idol are supposed to be that bad

Now that a second episode of The Idol has hit HBO, the discourse around the series’ sexually charged narrative has only heightened. But according to Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, who co-created the series alongside Levinson and Reza Fahim, sex and general horniness-at-large in The Idol doesn’t serve as a romantic or even necessarily erotic plot device; it’s supposed to be cringe.

‘Gluttony’ is the only word I can think of [to describe it],” Tesfaye says of The Idol’s sex scenes in a new interview with GQ’s Frazier Tharpe. “[Tedros] can’t believe he’s there. He comes off like such a loser. Those moments are the humanity that you find in a psychopath, the chink in his armor.”

If the series’ intimate sequences are supposed to reflect loser behavior, they’ve definitely succeeded. An episode 2 scene where Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) asphyxiates herself with a red scarf while masturbating along to Tedros’ mechanically horn-dogged-up dirty talk was recently deemed “the worst sex scene in history” by British GQ. But as Tesfaye explains, that’s actually aligned with what the viewer is supposed to think, another example of how The Idol (in Tesfaye’s own words) is “puppet-mastering your feelings through the show.”

“There’s nothing sexy about it,” Tesfaye says of the scene. “How ever you’re feeling watching that scene, whether it’s discomfort, or you feel gross, or you feel embarrassed for the characters. It’s all those emotions adding up to: This guy is in way over his head, this situation is one where he is not supposed to be here.”

According to Tesfaye, Paul Verhoeven’s classic 1992 thriller Basic Instinct was a big inspiration for the series. “Verhoeven is the king of ‘90s satire thriller—yes, there’s moments of ‘sexy’ in his films but there are other moments that are very cheesy and hilarious,” Tesfaye explains, shouting out Rachel Sennott, Hank Azaria, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph for their ability to “shift the tone” from scene to scene.

Throughout the interview, Tesfaye makes it clear that half the fun of helming a series like The Idol is watching the audience (and a bevy of largely unimpressed critics) react online in real time. But even though Tesfaye admits he’s “loving” all the conversation around the series, he also shares that he tries not to give reviews laser focus.

“I love to put it out there, and take [the reactions] in—but I try not to obsess too much,” he says.