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Lily-Rose Depp says she would 'steer clear' of The Weeknd when he was 'in the zone' on 'The Idol' set

They star in the new HBO series, which premiered June 4.
/ Source: TODAY

Lily-Rose Depp says seeing "full Tedros mode" was her cue to give The Weeknd space on the set of their new HBO series, "The Idol."

The "Earned It" singer co-created the show and plays Tedros, a sleazy club owner who takes aspiring pop star Jocelyn, played by Depp, under his wing.

“I don’t think anybody went full method — nobody lost their minds,” Depp told Entertainment Weekly in a story published June 2, referring to the extent to which actors still carried their characters when cameras were not rolling.

But she did witness Abel Tesfaye, professionally known as The Weeknd, "in his zone."

“Sometimes when Abel would get — I don’t want to reveal too much about where Abel’s character goes, but when he would be in full Tedros mode sometimes, I would steer clear of him," she described. "I’d be like, ‘He’s in his zone right now.’”

"The Idol" premiered on HBO June 4 and is available on its streaming platform, Max. In an interview for W magazine last month, the “Can’t Feel My Face” singer said he may start going by his birth name and that he came to the decision while filming a scene at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles last fall.

"I had to take off The Weeknd outfit, put on Tedros’ wig, shoot with Jocelyn, then go back to being The Weeknd,” he recalled to W. “It was tough to go from one head to another.”

The singer said the peak of how jarring the experience was for him was when he later lost his voice after filming the scene, which was shot during an actual Weeknd concert.

He said, “No voice came out at all. That’s never happened before.”

“My theory is that I forgot how to sing because I was playing Tedros, a character who doesn’t know how to sing,” he said. “I may be looking too deeply into this, but it was terrifying.”

As a result, Tesfaye said that playing Tedros has impacted how he sees himself.

“I’m going through a cathartic path right now,” the 33-year-old singer told the outlet.

“It’s getting to a place and a time where I’m getting ready to close The Weeknd chapter,” he explained. “I’ll still make music, maybe as Abel, maybe as The Weeknd. But I still want to kill The Weeknd. And I will. Eventually. I’m definitely trying to shed that skin and be reborn.”

His new show came under fire in March when Rolling Stone published an article headlined “‘The Idol’: How HBO’s Next ‘Euphoria’ Became Twisted ‘Torture Porn,’” citing sources who alleged that production had, in the words of the magazine, “gone wildly, disgustingly off the rails.”

The Weeknd commented on the article in a Vanity Fair story published last month, calling it “ridiculous.” Depp told Vanity Fair for the same story, “I really and truly have never felt more like my opinions and my ideas or my input was more valued.”