Why is Lily-Rose Depp, Johnny Depp’s daughter, the S*x symbol of the moment?
She stars in the controversial series The Idol, where she explores all her sensuality and fragility.
Lily-Rose Depp loves to walk naked on the side of a pool, she guards a photo that went viral after having sex at a wild party. When she is not dancing in a little dress that leaves little to the imagination or playing with herself while listening to a fragment of the dream hit with which she intends to raise her career, she imagines herself trying to become something more than a pop star that generates hysteria, gossip and the desire of a strange guy named Tedros, who is obsessed with her.
Lili Rose-Depp has dealt with excess, unbridled sexuality and enduring nights of alcohol and drugs. The 24-year-old daughter of actor and longtime scandalous Johnny Depp and enigmatic French actress and singer Vanessa Paradis is a sex symbol of the moment, all thanks to her role as Jocelyn, a self-destructive, nymphomaniacal pop star who exudes sex on The Idol, the controversial HBO series that features The Weeknd as the diva-obsessed mentor; but the real-life star of the music world almost disintegrates in the face of the actress’s overwhelming presence and camera-loving body.
There isn’t an episode of The Idol that doesn’t feature a nude Jocelyn or record her walking around a gigantic mansion in her underwear. Likewise, the dancing and sweating choreographies she does for the songs that will give her a comeback tour of rebirth in that hell called the music industry, do not leave much to the imagination, they are invitations to let yourself go, to exploit all the sexual charge. Something that the actress feels very good about.
She stands out and is the driving force behind a series that seems to lose itself in its desire to be controversial, to mock, bury or show that fame and music is full of rats, exploiters, parasites and naked, nymphomaniac women living every day as if it were their last.
Lily-Rose Depp’s character feeds into that ecosystem, but takes it to another level. The Idol opened her way to a young woman who scandalizes. Sex helps her to escape, to improve a rhythm and so there is no shame in taking advantage of it. Tedros wants to dominate her, he caresses her to calm her down and has sex with her to get her to hit a more powerful note in a new song.
She seems to be hypnotized by the quirky club owner, frustrated producer, ex-convict and emotional manipulator. Bad girls love bad boys, so Jocelyn could be no exception.
It is true that The Idol has been dismembered with hatred by almost all the critics -but they have agreed that Lily-Rose Depp and her character-shine, better to burn, in this crude radiography of fame. The woman with the surnames Depp and Paradis, does not mind leaving her skin in every chapter and explores her sexuality in depth, in these times of double standards and political correctness.
On camera she reveals that mix of rare beauty inherited from her mother; on par with a trait of wild and uninhibited person, which would come from the genetics of her father Johnny Depp.
You can see the effort (like Jocelyn) in trying to make a personal mark. “I have to work twice as hard,” she once said in an interview, referring to the fact that her life as an artist is more demanding because she has the Depp and Paradis surnames.
The sexy catwalk from hell
The Idol is not her first production, but she has gone deep into the misfortunes and beauties of her character. She has explored her body, portrayed drugs, alcohol and trauma, amid tears, unbalanced laughter and a stunning body that the camera adores. In fact, she hardly sings in the series (it is something that interests her a lot in real life), but she does model and moves on the catwalk of this extreme rumba that seems tailor-made for her ambitions: to stand out above ideas of nepotism and leave a mark. Even in every appearance he always stays in the mind.
But why is he a sex symbol? She has strong features like those that once eclipsed movie directors when they met Marilyn Monroe. Although she is not as voluptuous, there is a sexual energy that connects to what caused actress Mae West, who between 1920 and 1940 flushed a society and used her physical beauty and a double entendre in everything around her to attract attention. Jocelyn has a lot of that too, but in this age of out-of-control behind closed doors and proper social media living. As Jocelyn, Lily-Rose Depp, exorcises her fears with a little oral sex in a convertible car while shopping in the exclusive Rodeo Drive area of Los Angeles.
“I feel really good after doing scenes like that because there’s something about it that I find very therapeutic, and maybe that’s why I like doing this job.
“Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but it feels very cathartic,” the actress acknowledged in an interview. “If you’re playing a completely fictional scene and you’ve never been through any of that, you have to find it within yourself. I think that kind of work is really healing, actually,” she stressed.
Even if critics say she spends more time topless than acting, Lily- Rose Depp defends the path she chose to explore her character. “She’s someone who lives a life that I haven’t lived at all, being a pop star and a child performer. That I haven’t experienced. And yet what she’s going through is universal: not knowing if she can trust the people around her or the decisions she makes.”
Other women’s looks
Lily-Rose Depp cultivated a career in modeling. As a child, she accompanied her mother to runways and major fashion events. She took pictures with stars like Karl Lagerfeld and when she was 15 years old she was the image of the famous Chanel N. 5 perfume, she had already acted a year earlier in the horror film Tusk with her best friend Harley Quinn Smith and then repeated with her in Yoga Hosers.
A few years later she became a troubled dance legend. She played Isadora Duncan in the film The Ballerina and was a young woman trying to win the duel for love in the French film A Faithful Man, confronting the actress and model Laelitia Casta and wanting to steal the attention of Louis Garrel.
In The Idol she fulfills the principle she has set for herself as an actress: to make a direct and honest portrayal of the dimensions of a woman. Jocelyn is all that and deals with harsh contrasts by being powerful, fragile, sensual and a bit bitter, she is afraid, but dreams of going to the ultimate consequences to achieve what she sets out to do.
Sometimes she closes in on herself but does not then expose herself, she seeks the looks of her entourage -like some famous models-. Her tone in the series, could also connect with the tough and wild personality that once made famous and the protagonist of many headlines the sexy Kate Moss, another symbol of beauty and controversy that at one point in her life could have been the roughest inspiration for Jocelyn.
Lily Rose reigns in body almost more than in soul in this series that has more form than substance, with many scenes of sex, drugs and abuse. The Idol is a caricature of what it wants to criticize (the desire of a world to exploit others) and fails to keep pace with its female protagonist, the chemistry with The Weeknd feels forced, but the chemistry of Lily-Rose Depp and Jocelyn is growing and honest.
There may not be a second season of The Idol (the leading lady will soon be nothing less and nothing more than a vampire’s obsession in the new version of Nosferatu), but Lily-Rose Depp’s sensual energy is going to be around for a while and her work in this series connects very well with one of Mae West’s famous lines: “Those who are scandalized, should be scandalized more often”.