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IDOL TALK
I love baring all for sex scenes and here’s why, says Sky’s The Idol star Lily-Rose Depp
MANY actresses blush at the idea of stripping off for the cameras – but Lily-Rose Depp isn’t one of them.
Controversy has surrounded her new role in The Idol, where she has been accused of flashing her naked breasts and bottom too much.
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But in an exclusive interview, the 24-year-old — whose parents are actors Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis — says it is all in good taste.
And she revealed she enjoyed baring all for sex scenes.
Lily-Rose, whose pop diva character Jocelyn is struggling to make a comeback following a mental breakdown in the show, even claims the scenes felt “therapeutic” and that she didn’t consider a body double.
She explained: “It’s all me. I love doing that kind of work.
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“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying that kind of work.
“I also think it really speaks to who the character is and who she wants to tell you that she is.
“She’s a performer through and through, even when she’s alone and just looking in the mirror.
“Every outfit and every interaction and every piece of nudity and all those things are very intentional and were really important to me.”
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The Sky Atlantic series shows Lily-Rose’s character having a tangled and torrid romance with twisted cult leader and self-help guru Tedros, played by singer The Weeknd.
Highly explicit scenes featuring revenge porn, self-harm, drug abuse, masturbation, choking and a sexual encounter involving a knife have led the show to be branded “torture porn” and “rape fantasy” by some horrified critics.
Childhood traumas
In the second episode, Tedros forces one of his followers to wear a shock collar and gives him electric zaps when he fails to follow orders.
In another scene, Jocelyn pleasures herself with a glass of ice cubes while choking herself.
Her best friend is seen snorting cocaine and, while Tedros directs, Jocelyn performs solo sex acts as he narrates the scene in graphic language.
The show is dividing experts and viewers, with some labelling it “a toxic man’s fantasy” that is “more regressive than transgressive”.
Critics have noted that Lily-Rose spends “most of her time semi-naked or performing sex acts”.
But she told The Sun on Sunday she did not feel exploited or objectified during filming.
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She added: “Maybe this makes me, like, a little twisted.
“But I feel really good after doing scenes like that because there’s something that feels very therapeutic about it to me — and maybe that’s why I like doing this job.
“Maybe there’s something wrong with me but it feels very cathartic and I feel very drained of anything that I maybe needed to let go of.
“Obviously when you go that far emotionally, you have to find it within yourself, it has to come from some place real. Some place inside of you.
“Even if you’re performing a scene that is completely fictionalised, and you’ve never actually gone through any of that stuff, you have to find it within yourself.
“But I find that kind of work to be really healing, actually."
Lily-Rose insists it was vital to immerse herself in Jocelyn’s personality to do her portrayal justice.
She said: “You have to find ways to relate to your character.
“It was so interesting getting to dive into her emotionally because she’s somebody who lives a life that I have not lived at all, being a pop star and being a child performer.
“These are things I have not experienced. And yet what she’s going through emotionally is so universal, this feeling of not knowing if you can trust the people around you and feeling like you want to be taken seriously as an artist and you don’t know if you’re going about that the wrong way or the right way.
“Having doubts about yourself and feeling insecure or feeling unsure about things, these are things that everybody can relate to — not just people in the entertainment industry.”
Lily-Rose spent her childhood living between French capital Paris — where her 50-year-old mum Vanessa is from — and Los Angeles, where American actor dad Johnny, 60, was doing most of his work.
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And she has had to cope with her own traumas.
When she was just seven, and living in London while her dad was filming the movie Sweeney Todd, she contracted E.Coli that resulted in kidney failure and she spent weeks in London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital.
She also had anorexia as a youngster and later told how social media trolls made cruel comments about her looks as she was trying to recover from the condition.
Lily-Rose was brought up in a world of acting and fashion.
As a little girl she would put on shows for her parents and dress up and dance.
By the age of eight she had met icons such as fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and by the time she was 14 she had appeared in her first film — by accident.
Her childhood best friend was Harley Quinn Smith, the daughter of director Kevin Smith.
When he was filming a horror movie, Tusk, with her dad she went on set one day and they asked her to appear in a scene — which sparked her love of acting.
Then at 15 she landed a global ambassadorship role at fashion house Chanel, who her mum had worked with since the Nineties.
Despite her background she needed singing, dancing and piano lessons before she started filming The Idol to help her get into character.
Caused controversy
Last month, Lily-Rose returned to France for the 76th Cannes International Film Festival and the premiere of The Idol.
Her parents haven’t commented on their daughter’s decision to bare all.
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But Lily-Rose suspects they might prefer her to be a little more modest.
She said with a laugh: “I don’t think any parent wants their child to be cold so I’m sure they would want a blanket on me.”
One person who knows Lily-Rose isn’t modest is her girlfriend, rapper and singer 070 Shake, real name , and who Lily-Rose describes as the “love of my life”.
The pair started dating in January.
Lily-Rose made her relationship with the 26-year-old New Jersey performer official by sharing a photo of them smooching on her Instagram story last month, captioned, “Four months w my crush”.
The model-turned-actress previously dated Dune star Timothée Chalamet and was in a relationship for two years with Austin Butler, who played Elvis Presley in the musical biopic Elvis.
She also dated French rapper Yassine Stein.
Lily-Rose denies Jocelyn was modelled on stars such as Britney Spears.
But she did get inspiration from one of her favourite actresses, Sharon Stone, 65, whose performance in 1992 blockbuster Basic Instinct also caused controversy when she uncrossed her legs to show that she wasn’t wearing any underwear.
Lily-Rose said: “We’re not telling anybody else’s story. There are so many incredible pop stars of our day and, of course, I admire and have so much respect for them, especially after trying to dive into the psyche of somebody who lives a lifestyle I haven’t lived.
“But something we also wanted to do with the character is make her feel simultaneously like a pop star of our time, but also like she existed in her own plain. We talked about a lot of other influences that are not pop stars.
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“We talked about Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, all of these other incredible, powerful women who had a lot of influence on Jocelyn as well. I love Basic Instinct and I love Sharon Stone so much, and she was a huge influence for me for this character.
“That’s why I dyed my hair light, so that I could pay a little homage to her in Basic Instinct.”
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