Kanye West’s recent antisemitism scandal was mocked in the season finale of HBO’s controversial series The Idol, which aired Sunday (2 July).
West, also known as Ye, faced significant backlash in 2022 after sharing various antisemitic conspiracy theories. During a December appearance on prominent conspiracist Alex Jones’s show, InfoWars, the “Flashing Lights” rapper said, “I like Hitler”, adding, “They did good things too, we’ve got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time.”
In the fifth and final episode of The Idol, Lily-Rose Depp’s popstar Jocelyn puts on a showcase for her management team.
As they watch on at the performances, which are intensely sexual and performed partially nude, Live Nation representative Andrew Finkelstein (Eli Roth) asks Jocelyn’s co-manager Chaim (Hank Azaria) about the state of her mental health.
“This is what puts the asses in the seats in the arenas,” Chaim reassures Andrew, who responds, “You know, f***ing Kanye was filling arenas until he decided to start following Adolf Hitler.”
The Idol, which was created by Euphoria’s Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, has polarised viewers, with many mocking its “atrocious” dialogue and disturbing branded “trauma porn”.
Lily-Rose Depp and The Weeknd in ‘The Idol’ and Kanye West (right)— (Eddy Chen/HBO/Getty Images)
In March, the show came under fire after Rolling Stone published an exposé featuring anonymous interviews with those who worked on the series. They alleged that Tesfaye, Levinson and the show’s producers had taken the show “disgustingly off the rails” to create a drama “about a man who gets to abuse this woman and she loves it”.
In a recent interview with The Independent, Azaria reassured that “there was tremendous respect, collaboration, feedback, and checking in from Sam about whether everybody was comfortable with what was going on” in regards to the show’s numerous nude scenes.
Depp (daughter of Johnny and French singer Vanessa Paradis) also defended the number of nude scenes, saying that the “occasional bareness” of her character physically is meant to mirror her emotional state.
After the finale, fans were left perplexed by a baffling detail that turned the entire series on its head.
The Idol is available to stream on NOW.
