Content Consumed: Sam Levinson, The Idol, Chris Pine, and Derry Girls

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Content Consumed

5 min readMar 1, 2023

Hey, hey! Welcome back to Content Consumed and happy March.

In today’s edition, we’re chatting about…
😬 The Idol exposed as a disturbing Sam Levinson shitshow
🔮 Chris Pine’s rituals inspire me
💘 Internet obsession of the week: Killer clown and Derry Girls

Sam Levinson and ‘The Idol’ exposed

There had been murmurs. Gossip that The Idol, a new HBO show starring Lily-Rose Depp and The Weeknd, had been scrapped and reshot over and over again, production and editing constantly delayed. Rumors that this was Sam Levinson’s (Euphoria creator) fault.

All true, it’s been confirmed by dozens of interviews conducted by Rolling Stone.

The Idol, which was originally about “a woman who was finding herself sexually, turned into a show about a man who gets to abuse this woman and she loves it.”

The female showrunner, Amy Seimetz, was pushed out. HBO handed the show to Levinson, “only to have him weaken the show’s overarching message, many sources say, by dialing up the disturbing sexual content and nudity to match — and even surpass — that of his most successful show, Euphoria.”

More from the startling piece:

The drastic delay of the show’s release was caused by Levinson taking over as director and scrapping the nearly-finished $54–75 million project to rewrite and reshoot the entire thing. But, because he has so much power with Euphoria, he gets away with it at HBO.
Levinson scrapped Seimetz’s approach, “making it less about a troubled starlet falling victim to a predatory industry figure and fighting to reclaim her own agency, and more of a degrading love story with a hollow message that some crew members describe as being offensive.”
Like, really disturbing sexual and physically violent stuff that you can find in the article because I don’t want it on the pages of Content Consumed.
Both The Weeknd—executive producer and star of the show—and Levinson were behind the shakeup, “wanting to tone down the cult aspect of the storyline and pivot into something else entirely, dropping the “feminist lens” through which the show was being told as a result.”
Everyone has been taken advantage of, even K-pop superstar Jennie of Blackpink. Jennie, apparently, has barely any air time and an inconsequential story arc. “It was like three or four lines per episode for her,” a production source says. “They didn’t let her talk that much. Her job was to sit there [and] look pretty, basically.”

Gross, not shocking, because it’s Sam Levinson. His list of controversies is endless.

I had planned on watching The Idol (whenever the hell it comes out), but I think I’m tapping out of this one.

I’m into Chris Pine’s obsession with rituals

Chris Pine is featured in this month’s Esquire, and of course he reminisces on Don’t Worry Darling and all the drama that came with that wild press tour.

But what I loved most about the interview was the initial focus on his ~rituals~, as that’s something I’m trying to get into. Okay, maybe not specifically rituals, but I’m trying to get into routine endorsed by rituals.

My point is, the guy likes rituals:

Pine enjoys a process. Making an espresso, building a fire. “I love any sort of ritual,” he says. “I can even get into a Catholic Mass because I like the aesthetic. And a sauna is a whole ritual. It’s about gifting yourself a period where there’s nothing to do other than to purify, to release, to cleanse, to start again.”

Cedarwood, rosemary, barley tea. Cold plunges, oils, hissing hot stones, bundles of twigs. (And I hear him on that Catholic mass part—love me some rote prayer memorization and stained glass.) All part of the process that Pine forces upon this interviewer.

That’s journalism, baby!

Brb, going to light some incense. Maybe I’ll be as good-looking, talented, and smart as 42-year-old movie star Chris Pine if I try hard enough.

P.S. He saw all your memes. “All the memes I saw about my face in Venice made me fucking laugh,” he says, especially the one captioned “me on an important zoom call watching my cat throw up on the sofa.”

Internet obsession of the week:
It / Derry Girls crossover

Upon reports that clown-horror-movie It prequel series titled Welcome to Derry had been ordered at HBO Max, the memes started flowing in.

Because if you’ve ever watched Derry Girls (of which I am a loyal devotee), you know these girls would have some reactions to a spooky clown killer showing up in Derry, Northern Ireland.