Lily-Rose Depp will always have Sam Levinson‘s back.
The actress is continuing to defend The Idol co-creator after he received backlash in 2023 for the controversial HBO series, which saw Depp play Jocelyn, opposite Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye’s Tedros. Levinson also created Euphoria, starring Zendaya.
“I think the thing that sucked about that was to have people talking shit about Sam [Levinson], who is a great friend of mine and somebody that I consider family,” she recently told host Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I’m super close with him and Ashley [Levinson] — his wife who’s a producer on the show — and they are such wonderful people, so incredible, so kind, and really kind of took me under their wing in a way.”
The Nosferatu star continued, “The only thing that was upsetting about that whole time period was people talking negatively about [Sam] because the things that they said about him, particularly, as a filmmaker, just couldn’t be further from the truth than from, at least, my experience working with him. So that sucks. You just never want to hear people talking shit about your friend.”
The Idol followed Depp’s struggling pop star character, who jumps into a complex relationship with Tedros, a nightclub owner and modern-day cult leader. The HBO show was canceled after one season.
Depp said that while she loves her character and the series, they “always knew it was going to be controversial,” adding that she’s “interested in that kind of work.”
“People are always gonna make their own opinions of things, and so you just have to be steadfast in your conviction of, like, ‘I know why I’m doing this,’ and I know why I did that,” the Voyagers actress explained. “That was a period in my life where I feel like I learned so much, I was pushed so far out of my comfort zone, in the most beautiful way, and it gave me so much growth that I will always look back on that as one of the most special times of my life.”
Depp added, “I think we were also, like, pushing society’s buttons intentionally a little bit, in a way, and of course, it was received in the way that it was, but it’s OK. … It’s beautiful and I wouldn’t have changed anything about it.”
The Wolf actress, daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, shared a similar sentiment in June 2023 amid the show’s premiere, saying, “I don’t think any of us were interested in making anything that was going to be, you know, fun for the whole family.”
While the show’s promotional materials leaned into its edginess, it was later met with unfavorable attention when Rolling Stone published an exposé alleging that the series went “wildly, disgustingly off the rails” following the departure of original director Amy Seimetz.
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