Is The Idol Based on a True Story? What the Cast Has Said

HBO’s The Idol is causing fans to draw parallels to the lives of some real-life pop stars — but is it based on a true story?

Released on June 4, the new Sam Levinson series stars Lily-Rose Depp as Jocelyn, a rising pop star who starts a romance with an enigmatic Los Angeles club owner and underground cult leader, Tedros, played by Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye.

While the show previously made headlines for the rumored controversy behind the scenes, including reports from production members about the toxic set environment and creative clashes, most recently, the biggest chatter has been around whether the show has drawn inspiration from the lives of real celebrities such as Britney Spears. 

Though the show’s cast and creators have noted that they were inspired by their own experiences in Hollywood in the music industry when forming the characters, they have maintained that the series is not a direct biopic about a specific person. 

Even so, that hasn’t stopped fans from noting similarities to real-life events throughout the series. 

Read ahead to see what the cast has said about the real-life inspirations behind The Idol and its main character, Jocelyn. 

Is The Idol based on a true story?

Though The Idol isn’t entirely “based on a true story,” the cast has noted that they were heavily inspired by their own experiences in the music industry when creating the show. 

"When ... Abel 'the Weeknd' Tesfaye, Reza Fahim, and Sam Levinson brought us The Idol, it was clear their subversive, revelatory take on the cult of the music industry was unlike anything HBO had ever done before," Francesca Orsi, executive vice president of HBO programming, said in a previous statement.

“We initially wanted to make a dark, twisted fairy tale with the music industry and everything I know about it and heighten it, and take inspirations from films that both me and Sam love — it was really our love for music,” Tesfaye added at the show’s Cannes Film Festival press conference.

“When I found out how much Sam is involved in the music in Euphoria and getting to work with him on the music on the show, that’s when it unlocked it for us," he continued. "Can we create our own pop star? Can we create somebody who is trying to find themselves, using my experiences, using his experiences, using Lily’s experiences ... creating something special, daring and exciting and fun that will make people laugh [and] piss some people off?”

Is Lily-Rose Depp’s character The Idol based on Britney Spears?

The show makes various nods to Britney Spears on the show (the trailer is set to a remix of “Gimme More” and the beauty team said Spears's late-'90s look inspired Jocelyn's makeup in the earlier episodes). However, Levinson maintains that the show isn’t meant to be her story. 

"Look, I was a kid of the '90s, and [Spears] is one of the greatest pop stars of all time," Levinson said at Cannes Film Festival when asked about whether Jcoelyn's struggles in the show mirror Spears'.

However, he said, "we're not trying to tell a story about any particular pop star. I think we're looking more at how the world perceives pop stars, and the pressure that it puts on that individual. It's a lot of pressure to constantly have to be on, and to have to be what everyone wishes you to be. I also think that it's a lonely life."

Depp added, “We’re not telling anyone else’s story,” noting that they wanted Jocelyn to “feel simultaneously like a pop star of our time, but one that is in her own plane.” 

Spears does have a connection to co-creators Levinson and The Weeknd, which has prompted even more speculation that the series was loosely inspired by her journey to stardom.

In March 2022, Britney praised Levinson’s work, saying she’d just started watching Euphoria and that she thought it was “amazing,” per a screenshot captured by Buzzfeed. Two months later, Spears posted a short video of her hanging with Levinson and The Weeknd in person, with the “Blinding Lights” singer commenting on the post with a red heart emoji.

Though it’s unclear what their meetup was about, it was later revealed that Spears’ assistant Victoria “Vicky T” Asher was the one who connected them.

“So so glad I could make this beautiful moment happen,” Asher wrote on her Instagram story at the time, revealing that she and Levinson are longtime friends. “This was very special to me. Bringing legends I love together.”

Was Lily-Rose Depp’s character on The Idol based on any other stars?

Though her character wasn’t modeled after any specific person, Depp explained that she drew from the example of another famously controversial performance for her character Jocelyn. 

"We actually drew from a lot of other influences that are not pop stars," she told Entertainment Tonight. "We thought a lot about Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct and the Gene Tierneys and Lauren Bacalls... all of these women that were very inspiring to me for the role."

Following the show’s premiere, fans have also noted several parallels to Jocelyn and Selena Gomez, who previously dated co-creator The Weeknd. In particular, fans have called out one scene in the pilot, which shows Jocelyn wearing a hospital bracelet during a photoshoot (which mirrors how Gomez wore a hospital bracelet in the promo art for her single “Bad Liar,” which was released shortly after she received treatment for lupus). 

Though The Weeknd hasn't addressed any of the parallels to Gomez specifically, he previously noted during Cannes that Jocelyn’s character is “inspired by my experiences and experiences of other artists that I’ve witnessed — male, female.”

He continued, “I feel very fortunate to have made some of the right decisions in my life … I get to do what I love with the people I love, the people I trust. And Jocelyn is almost like an alternate reality if I had made some of the wrong choices in my life. It’s almost like I’m trying to show the world or teach young artists to make the right decisions.”

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