Sam Levinson’s The Idol just passed an impressive viewership milestone set by his first TV series, Euphoria.
His controversial new series follows Lily-Rose Depp as a troubled popstar on the rise who falls prey to a cult leader, played by Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye.
HBO’s streaming service Max announced Monday (12 June) that The Idol’s first episode has now surpassed 3.6 million viewers in its first week on the service.
In the same timeframe, Euphoria (2019) garnered an audience of 3.3 million and Mike White’s critically-acclaimed series The White Lotus (2021) had 3 million on the platform.
However, episode two of The Idol, which aired Sunday (11 June), saw an audience dip of 12% down to 800,000 from episode one’s 913,000.
Deadline reports that by the end of season one, the average episodic audience was Euphoria was 6.6 million while The White Lotus season one grew to about 9.3 million viewers.
The Idol has generated significant media attention over accusations that it depicts an exploitative and misogynist attitude towards women.
In March, 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”.
After episode two aired, viewers took to social media to express their horror over Tesfaye’s character’s graphic dialogue.
Depp (daughter of Johnny and French singer Vanessa Paradis) has defended the number of nude scenes in the show, saying that the “occasional bareness” of her character physically is meant to mirror her emotional state.
The Idol continues Sundays on HBO and Sky Atlantic.
