Co-creator and star Tesfaye has also weighed in on the controversy: he responded to the report by sharing a clip from the series via Twitter and Instagram. The scene — where his character calls Rolling Stone “irrelevant” — tagged the publication with the caption, “did we upset you?” Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman replied “Not at all,” with images of The Weeknd’s prior cover stories.
.@RollingStone did we upset you? pic.twitter.com/Uyx06lyRgx
— The Weeknd (@theweeknd) March 1, 2023
The scene sees a publicist (played by Dan Levy) pitching Tedros (Tesfaye) and pop star Jocelyn (Depp) on a photo shoot for the cover of Rolling Stone. Tedros shoots the idea down, arguing “Rolling Stone has 6 million followers on Instagram, half of them probably bots. And Jocelyn has 78 million followers, all real I’d assume. So she does a photo shoot, she tags them, they get her followers. More money for Rolling Stone, nothing for Jocelyn.”
