The Weeknd, Harry Styles, & the Singer to Actor Pipeline: Maybe You Just Can’t Do Both?

by Isabel Hodges.

Since the “show of the summer” dropped, aka The Idol, I’ve been plagued with nightmares about the the singer-to-actor epidemic. It’s not so much that it’s something I can clearly consider detrimental to cinema, but rather something I feel is becoming even more present the more I turn my tv on, or swipe through my phone. It fascinates me how actors can have successful musical careers, but there are very few singers that have somewhat of a good turn in acting. Everywhere I look from Prince, to Madonna, to Justin Timberlake and to Harry Styles I find myself wanting to hurl myself off of a building out of a pure cringe induced terror every time I see their faces pop up on my screen. Don’t get me wrong, I thought Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985) was amazing (but that was mainly because she wasn’t really acting, she was just playing herself), but I just think that some singers should stay in the recording studio, not in the movie studios. Now I believe that there are a few exceptions, after all I cannot pair every single singer whose ever acted into a group which is labelled “if we played this movie enough it could be used as a torture device”, think David Bowie in The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983), think Frank Sinatra in The Man With the Golden Arm (Guy Hamilton, 1955), think Cher in Mermaids (Richard Benjamin, 1990), or Beyonce in Austin Powers in Goldmember (Jay Roach, 2002). But we as an audience cannot deny that there is this group of singers that are delusional to think that they could carry the plot of a film. After all being the lead of a feature length film requires a lot more than a choreographed music video that lasts for only like five minutes. I want to explore the two leading singer-tries-to-be-actor-but-fails victims that garnered great attention by social media in the past few years, starting with the star of the much booed and panned tv show that no one really wanted or asked for, The Weeknd in The Idol.

The Weeknd in The Idol Trailer.

I know I’m a little late to the Weeknd-can’t-act hate train, but watching him fight for his life all over social media has not stopped playing through my mind over the past few months (unlike The Idol which I have happily erased any and every trace from inside my brain). The Idol is a shallow look-behind-the-scenes of the music industry erotic melodrama, about the creation of a celebrity persona by PR teams. The Idol is a vanity projected filmed to prove that The Weeknd and Sam Levinson are the best in the industry, only to utterly embarrass themselves with crimes against dialogue, trying to connect to Gen Z but to fall flat on their faces millennial style as lines are delivered without any self awareness and ick-inducing unsexiness as The Weeknd tries extremely hard to play into a serious role and ends up wooden and awkward instead. Here are just a few really amazing lines you can find in the show:

“Having her around is like being in communist China”

“She’s not going to fuck you unless she has mental problems, and that’s why mental illness is sexy.”

“He’s so rapey” / “Yeah, I kinda like that about him”

“Twitter is calling her the human cum sock”

quotes taken from The Idol.

Not only was the show trashed by critics for its blatant misogyny and awful acting from its ‘main’ star, fans also cried out for the show to be cancelled as “it’s gonna ruin his music for me.” Even Forbes journalist Paul Tassi wrote on the subject, saying “This is deeply embarrassing for The Weeknd on every level, from the conception of this project to his role and acting within it. I’ve never seen someone have so much control over something that makes them look so, so bad.”


What also makes this even worse is the fact that The Idol was screened at the Cannes film festival…I just want to speak to the person who agreed to that; I just want to understand what they were doing, what the hell they were thinking?! Even before being screened, the tv show had people talking as rumours whirled over social media about a toxic work environment and The Weeknd, who as co-creator, feeling that the script was leaning too much into the female perspective and decided to adjust his character’s screen time. This comes as the original director, Amy Seimetz quit the show as an unnamed source on the production relayed that parts of the newly written and adjusted script were focused mainly on a “rape fantasy”. It has also been recently been revealed that Sam Levinson consulted with photographer Petra Collins over the original idea of Euphoria, as her photographs had inspired him to write the show and approached her with the idea of directing. Collins moved to Los Angeles to work on Euphoria for five months “I was like ‘I am directing the show.’ I created a whole world for it, did the casting, last minute, HBO was like, ‘we are not hiring you because you are too young.” A year later Levinson went onto copy her photographic style of colourful teen angst and take credit for the show. It’s clear that working within this environment isn’t creating anything of much substance, but one of male power and control not only within the set but also within the camera frame. The Idol is not the first ever tv show to be screened at Cannes with David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return and Jane Campion and Ariel Kleiman’s Top of the Lake: China Girl beating out Sam Levinson (although the tv shows premiered outside of the competition) With standing ovations - somehow- the first two episodes of this torture-porn tv show were stitched together and received (you guessed it) pretty badly by critics with the consensus on rotten tomatoes being: “Every bit as florid and sleazy as the industry it seeks to satirise, [it] places itself on a pedestal with unbridled style but wilts under the spotlight.”

Now onto our next victim, the one and only Harry Styles. First appearing in Dunkirk(Christopher Nolan, 2017), with critics declaring Styles as “a promising actor” that “pulled out a restrained yet poignant performance that vindicated his director.” with Nolan even comparing him to Heath Ledger. So with such a terrific debut you’d think Styles would go on to dominate the screen. He has done, but not in the right ways. Then came along Don’t Worry Darling with its on set drama sending the internet into a frenzy. After Styles was signed onto the project in the September of 2020 the film fell into controversy over Wilde’s alleged firing of original lead Shia LaBeouf, whilst later being pictured in January of 2021 holding hands with Styles. After ‘connecting’ on the film set an insider told PEOPLE that their “chemistry was very obvious” whilst filming, as Style’s was constantly visiting her trailer. The sparked dating rumours also only came weeks after it was revealed that Wilde had split from her husband Jason Sudeikis in 2020. Now of course PR couples exist, it’s a way to get people talking about the film, promoting it without having to spend a dime. But not all press is good press, especially when rumours swirl that Wilde wasn’t actually directing the movie because she and Styles were far too busy sleeping with each other.


After filming had completed the movie was screened at the Venice Film Festival with its main star Florence Pugh absent from the press call and styles avoiding Wilde on the red carpet afraid of more internet speculation. The apparent ‘fall-out’ between Wilde and Pugh was questioned but answering was avoided by the stars. Pugh did later turn up on the red carpet by herself, and posed with the cast as both Wilde and Pugh’s stylists battled each other online through cryptic posts alluding to the tension. Videos from the event went viral over Styles allegedly spitting on Chris Pine and the Styles also revealing that “you know my favourite thing about the movie is like it feels like a movie.” As internet memes swirled of Chris Pine’s bored, staring-into-space face in the interview one could only imagine the clear divide between actors and singers-trying-to-be-actors. With one critic adding after watching the film, “now I fully understand why Nolan told this dude to stay quiet in Dunkirk.”. To end the night Styles also spontaneously kissed costar Nick Kroll during the five minute post-screening ovation. One critic wrote “if only the movie were as fascinating as seeing the cast act a damn fool while promoting it. As a friend of mine said recently, let’s hope this press tour never ends.”

Fans were disappointed by the film as all previous excitement began to rapidly vanish, whilst critics marked Styles’s first leading role as “truly performed poorly”. The internet was quick to jump at early teaser clips of Style’s acting only to critique his accent and wooden-ness. Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian wrote “Styles may or may not be a talented actor; it’s hard to tell from this.” Whilst others deemed his performance as “lack[ing] charisma”, but it may not have been entirely Styles’s fault as he delivered what he could, given what the script had provided. But one, well I mean I, can say that Styles was no stand out in his role, shocking scenes of melodrama turned into me laughing at the screen, the inability to put across the feelings that need to be conveyed stunt these musicians from becoming fully fledged actors. It is the believability that surrounds it. Actors have personas but they perform in an array of different roles whilst musicians uphold not only a stage persona but a completely different way of performing, and when that is applied to acting, for some reason it just doesn’t translate well across the screen. We see Harry Styles as The Harry Styles, he already has a role he must play, Harry Styles is already a character.

Since his time in Don’t Worry Darling, Styles has made a cameo in Marvel’s very forgettable Eternals (Chloé Zhao, 2023) which was also somewhat critically panned, to then take on another lead role in My Policeman which some viewers found to be “terribly melodramatic” with Styles finding himself “corseted by a screenplay that doesn’t meet expectations” again. Both Styles and The Weeknd have surrounded their first two pivotal acting roles in controversy, maybe that is why the audience believes their acting is so bad because their prospective projects have become the focal point of internet frenzy and focus, leaving audiences with high expectations only to become severely disappointed. Are they really as bad at acting as we thought?

by Isabel Hodges, September 2023.

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