‘The Idol’ Choreographer Breaks Down Lily-Rose Depp’s Epic ‘I’m Just a Freak’ Dance and the Influences Behind That Disastrous Music Video
To craft the now iconic dance behind “World Class Sinner/I’m A Freak” from HBO’s “The Ido,l” choreographer Nina McNeely first needed to understand the root of pop star and musical sensation Jocelyn’s (played by Lily-Rose Depp).
“She’s a former child star. She was at the pinnacle of her fame, then went through a rough patch and had a mental breakdown. And in the rehearsal scene, that’s her big comeback; she’s rehearsing for her big comeback, so there’s an insane amount of pressure on her,” McNeely explained in Variety’s Artisans series, presented by HBO. “She had canceled tours; she needs to get that money back. She needs to top the charts, and she’s also having that rehearsal in the midst of a scandal.”
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Visual artist and dance legend McNeely has worked with Major Lazer, Bj?rk, the Foo Fighters, and (of course) The Weeknd. “I first started working with Able [aka The Weeknd] because he’s a fan of Gaspar Noé, and I choreographed the film ‘Climax.'” That curiosity led to a long-running working relationship between the two.
So when “The Idol” co-creators Sam Levinson and Reza Fahim, needed a choreographer for Jocelyn’s “World Class Sinner / I’m a Freak” and “Dollhouse” The Weeknd (who also stars in the series, and leant the production his home to shoot out of) knew exactly who to call.
McNeely was inspired by iconic dance and pop moments, like “Take Off With Us” by Bob Fosse, Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted Snake,” “Showgirls” and Britney Spears’ “Slave 4 You” to curate Jocelyn’s movements, pose, rhythm and energy.
“She really needs to push the boundaries beyond what she did before, and she needs to be more daring, sexy, controversial and confident. I really wanted Jocelyn to feel like a timeless pop star,” the choreographer said. “I didn’t want to incorporate any trendy current kind of TikTok dance moves or anything like that. I wanted it to be able to live on and still feel iconic years from now.”
She added, “I knew that she needed to be this untouchable object of desire where everybody wanted to be with her, everyone wanted to be her, everyone wanted to know her. I used the dancers to tell that story.”
McNeely also said that she wanted to push the boundaries of what’s considered appropriate and taboo to create sufficient sexual tension: “One of my favorite moments was when all the dancers are around her, and they’re kind of breathing and pulsing as a unit, and each dancer’s turning her head and vying for her attention and they have all this eye contact, they’re basically breathing each other’s breath. I feel like that just created a lot of sexual tension that we needed.”
Choreographing with Jocelyn’s baggage center stage also allowed McNeely to incorporate some foreshadowing of the overall narrative and symbolism behind her character and her experience as a pop star.
“I wanted to play with this push-pull and power-play between her and the dancers, where she’s getting pulled in different directions and lifted and spun around, but then in the next breath, she can make a small gesture that controls all of them. So it’s getting manipulated and manipulating, which has much to do with her character throughout the show.”
It was also imperative to include several lifts that would later seem painful during Jocelyn’s dramatic on-set breakdown trying to film the music video for “Sinner.”
In fact, several of McNeely’s real-life experiences on music video sets actually crept into the disastrous shoot for Jocelyn. “Sam reached out, and he was like, ‘Will you just send me a list of everything that’s ever gone wrong on a music video set?’ And I said, ‘Yes, and that’s going to be extremely long.’ The top one was the shoes because that always happens every single time. Then the artist says, ‘I can’t do the moves.’ And usually, we have to modify it because it doesn’t work with what they did in rehearsal, which is disappointing as a choreographer because they’re killing it in rehearsal, and then all these restrictions come into play at the actual shoot.”
“There’s all kinds of things that can go wrong,” McNeely continued. “Costumes hurting you or not being flexible enough to dance in a light right in your eye when you’re trying to perform and not squint because that doesn’t look good, you never know. Or all the dancers are there ready to go and they shoot the hardest scene at the very end of the day when everyone’s makeup is melted off, they’re exhausted. So I always try and urge directors, ‘Can we please shoot the hardest scene first thing and get it out of the way?’ Then you do touch-ups and you have the rest of the day so much easier.”
Watch the full interview above to see how many “alternate versions” of the dance Depp had to shoot for the show.
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