As Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye and Lily-Rose Depp promoted The Idol, we often got the impression that they were promoting two different shows. Lily-Rose seems to believe that she’s promoting a show where her character is going through a brave feminist journey of escaping the clasp of a cult leader, sort of. Abel seems to believe that he’s playing a sexy, charming psycho who can get women to do whatever he wants. Anyway, I’m still not watching this crap, but a lot of you are, and I’ve seen some of the “commentary” and jokes about the cheesy grossness of The Idol. Now that two episodes are out and everyone keeps talking about how Abel is a terrible, charisma-free actor, it’s time for Abel to come out and say, hahaha, no, I’m in on the joke, you guys. My character is supposed to be a cheeseball! My character is supposed to be a charisma-vacuum loser! Some highlights from Abel’s GQ interview this week:

How he feels about the response to The Idol: “I’m loving it. It’s definitely shaken up the culture for sure [laughs]. We knew we were making something dark and controversial but true to what we want to say.

He’s fine with the conversation: “I just think discussion is healthy, no matter what. To me it’s like, I’m just happy that there’s conversation. That’s important for anything I do, especially this new medium that I’m in.

Peeling back the layers of Tedros: “When I’m trying to explain who he is, it’s tough without revealing too much, without peeling away too much of the layers. You try to be as mysterious as possible about who the character is so that you can take [the audience] on this journey. But piece by piece, week by week, we’ll reveal who he is. But he’s what you see on screen. He’s definitely a challenge. He’s despicable, a psychopath—why sugarcoat it? But he’s somehow useful to this girl, and it’s unfortunate and we hate to see it.

But Tedros isn’t actually a layered, mysterious guy: “Yeah, [the vampire imagery is] all intentional to heighten the camp of it all. But the reality is, there’s nothing really mysterious or hypnotizing about him. And we did that on purpose with his look, his outfits, his hair—the guy’s a douchebag. You can tell he cares so much about what he looks like, and he thinks he looks good. But then you see these weird moments of him alone—he rehearses, he’s calculated. And he needs to do that, or he has nothing, he’s pathetic. Which is true of a lot of people who are a fish out of water, put into these scenarios.

Tedros is just a con artist: “You look at him, and this is a score—Jocelyn might be the biggest score he’s ever had. It’s very obvious. He’s over-indulging, he walks into this house looking around like, Goddamn, am I way over my head? This can be the biggest job I’ve ever done. Whatever it is that he’s doing. Even the sex, it’s so gluttonous [laughs]. Especially in episode 2. ‘Gluttony’ is the only word I can think of [to describe it]. He 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.

Those exploitative sex scenes aren’t supposed to be sexy: “There’s nothing sexy about it. When we use Basic Instinct as a reference, we’re using Verhoeven. 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. 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.

[From GQ]

It’s actually hilarious to me that he’s now trying to play off all of the criticism as “you guys, we meant to do that” and “of course it’s supposed to be gross and awkward and awful, we were trying to do that!” Here’s the thing: even if you could successfully argue that Abel’s character Tedros was supposed to be telegraphing his lack of charisma, his loser energy… then why didn’t they make it realistic when it came to how Lily-Rose’s character reacts to him? This is the problem. Anyway… yeah, it’s so funny to me. “I meant to do that, you just couldn’t tell because I’m such a terrible actor!”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.