Sam Levinson is Blowing It: How HBO’s The Idol Can Help You Create Better Characters

In 1992, Cynthia Ward & Nisi Shawl found inspiration for their book, Writing the Other, in an unexpected context: a fantasy & sci-fi focused writer’s intensive called Clarion Writers Workshop. A galaxy far away from identity politics, a member of their cohort expressed hesitation about writing characters outside her own cultural and ethnic background, asserting it’s better not to try than risk condescending her audience.

The interaction inspired Ward & Shawl to co-author and develop a curriculum for writing outside one’s lived experience. Their aim was to address an important truth: representation and diversity are too important to ignore when the alternative is erasure.

Creating characters in our image is a fun-house mirror reflecting back our experience, trauma & personal narrative. However, standing in a stranger’s shoes should not be seen by writers as a burden, but rather an opportunity to tell a true-to-life story in a meaningful way. Developing characters we cannot inherently relate to is a challenge -- perhaps we find them foreign, bewildering, or even repugnant. But it’s our job to push past limitations and explore realities outside our own to not only tell authentic stories -- but facilitate our growth as writers. 

When it comes to developing characters outside his lived experience, Sam Levinson’s history is both groundbreaking and problematic. Euphoria is one of his groundbreaking examples. In bringing trans character Jules (played by Hunter Schaffer) to the small screen, Levinson went beyond casting to collaborate with Schaffer on dialogue and hired Scott Turner Schofield as the story’s trans consultant. The resulting depiction was heralded by the media and embraced by the trans community as an authentic portrayal of gender identity

Given the attention to detail in his previous work, it is confusing and infuriating Levinson botched the character development in his newest show, The Idol. Nevertheless, we all saw it coming.

One year ago, director Amy Seimetz (The Girlfriend Experience) was ejected from The Idol by the show’s co-creator, Abel Tesfaye (The Weeknd). Tesfaye’s rationale was that the narrative was “too focused on the female perspective.” Seimetz had completed four episodes of The Idol -- all of which were re-filmed & re-written. An estimated 80% of her footage was scrapped, which triggered a cacophony of character re-casting & scheduling headaches. It also put Levinson back in the director’s chair. 

As of today, The Idol has a score of 24% on Rotten Tomatoes -- a stark contrast from Euphoria’s 88% & its stack of Emmys. Critics have leaned into Levinson’s ineptitude in character development, but Jezebel’s Audra Heinrichs said it best: “It’s an irredeemably bad show that not only offers no nuance on a lecherous industry... mental health, or trauma specific to survivors thus far, but is also not nearly as smart, edgy, or cool as it thinks it is.”

One would think two different directors helmed The Idol & Euphoria; it’s perplexing Levinson was responsible for both. Even more perplexing: Levinson has doubled-down. In response to the release of a Rolling Stone article, which sourced thirteen crew members & their horror stories from production, Levinson responded: “I think we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.”

The Idol has put a renewed spotlight on writers’ culpability in inaccurate depictions of minorities on screen and the need for workshopping -- a subject at the core of my screenwriting classes. My curriculum embraces Ward and Shawl’s Writing the Other with touchstones from Shawl’s primer, ‘How Not to Be All About What It’s Not All About: Further Thoughts on Writing About Someone Else’s Culture and Experience’. It’s through their methodology I came to embrace the guest/tourist paradigm in my teaching- and my own work. 

A tourist is obvious. A Weekend at Bernie’s t-shirt. They crave exoticism; confusing dialogue for dialect and cherry-pick bits of culture to bring back to their hometown. But a guest asks for permission to enter an unknown community. They balance active listening with thoughtful questions to better inform their knowledge about the people & cultures which they know nothing about. They strive to be stupid -- stupidity invites curiosity and lets other people tell their stories. 

And while Levinson has demonstrated himself to be the worst kind of tourist -- we can look elsewhere to be inspired by the guests in our profession.

For 2022’s Best Picture winning Coda, director Sian Heder took a step back upon realizing she didn’t know enough about the deaf community to ensure authenticity. She learned American Sign Language and hired sensitivity experts to guide her work. In the soon-to-release Killers of Flower Moon, Martin Scoreses (another white male, like Levinson) not only stayed true to casting indigenous actors, but worked with the Osage nation to ensure an accurate portrayal of white supremacy’s impact on their community. His efforts were approved by Chief Standing Bear of the Osage, who is quoted as saying the director has “restored trust with the nation.”

In reflecting upon the creation of Coda, Heder dropped some words to write by: “As a filmmaker, it was an ego-less experience: I had to figure out how to let the story be what it needed to be, and I was trying to figure out how to support it, with camera, sound design, editing. We hopefully created a film where you don’t notice the filmmaking, where it’s not calling attention to it. It’s about letting the story lead the way.”