On Sept. 3, 2022, on what was intended to be the final date of his exhausting "After Hours Til Dawn" North American tour, the Weeknd confidently took the stage of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, before 80,000 fans, friends, label executives, his management and a camera crew shooting a climactic scene for his HBO drama "The Idol."
As the dramatic opening music of "Alone Again" thundered across the stadium, he rose slowly from beneath the stage on a hydraulic platform onto a set depicting a ruined, dystopian city. He began singing the song's opening verses, as he had over the tour's previous 17 concerts, while wraith-like dancers shrouded in red gowns stood at attention around him. But when, approximately 45 seconds after he appeared onstage, he shouted, "Hey, Los Angeles!" between verses, his voice cracked. He opened his mouth to sing the next line, and for one of the first times in his life, his source of power -- his unmistakable, one-in-a-million voice -- was gone.
"My body, and specifically my voice, had never failed me before," he says now. "I'd been onstage with a high fever, completely sick; I'd been onstage in the middle of a breakup or a death in the family; and I'd lost my voice during a performance. But I was always able to fight through it."
On that night, he tried to fight -- he was able to sing in a low range but couldn't come near the celestial heights that his powerful voice ordinarily can scale with ease. "I was doing all these vocal exercises onstage, like 'Brrrrrrrrrrr,' trying to get it back," he says. But after a few minutes, he realized it just wasn't going to happen.
"I was defeated on the world stage," he says and sighs, "with everyone watching."
In a halting voice, he explained the situation to the SoFi audience, apologized, offered refunds and promised a rescheduled date. "I had to go out there and face it," he says now. "And also, so they could see 'I can't physically give you the show that you paid for.' When I watched the video later, the reaction actually wasn't that bad. But in my head, all I heard was booing and screaming and hate and anger," he says. "That's how defeated I felt."
The Weeknd (real name: Abel Makkonen Tesfaye) is one of the world's biggest music stars, with 67 gold and platinum albums and singles, and he's the first artist to have 22 songs with a billion streams on Spotify, including 2019's "Blinding Lights," the platform's most streamed song of all time at 4.6 billion. He played for a whopping 105,000 people at a single concert in Brazil last fall and has collaborated with many top artists, including Ariana Grande, Kendrick Lamar, Daft Punk, Lana Del Rey, Travis Scott and Madonna. He headlined the Super Bowl halftime show in 2021, spending $7 million of his own money on an elaborate, COVID-protocol-certified stage and 115 dancers. So pressure is nothing new to him. And needless to say, he has resources. But this problem wasn't something that money or even medicine could fix.
"I saw my doctor the next day, and he said, 'There's nothing wrong with you -- your [vocal cords] are inflamed, but nothing out of the ordinary,'" the Weeknd recalls. "And that's when we came to the realization that it was all up here," he says, pointing to his head.
Exhaustion and stress, he says, were factors. He'd been dealing with major challenges throughout the oft-delayed tour, which was originally scheduled for the summer of 2020 and postponed several times due to the pandemic. And there were complications, logistical and otherwise, with "The Idol," which had scrapped millions of dollars' worth of footage from the original director, Amy Seimetz, and was being reshot, largely at the Weeknd's sprawling Bel-Air home, with "Euphoria" mastermind Sam Levinson -- a scheduling overhaul that meant the star had to shoot while on tour.
"I just think it was the last straw, man," he says now. "There was a lot of self-imposed pressure: flying to L.A. between concerts, getting into character" -- as Tedros, the sleazy, cult-leaderish would-be artist manager to pop star Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp) -- "shooting and then flying back for the next show.
"But what led up to it? Maybe it was that year, but maybe it was my whole life: survival, school, family, friendships, relationships, making it in the music industry. I'd always kind of suppressed it. You know, delusion helps!" he says with a laugh.
Something had to give.
"My voice has always been my secret weapon," he says, "my superpower, to get through whatever I need to get through. And in that moment, reality hit: Everything can change after this moment."
Yet his singing voice returned within a few days, and he delivered on his promises: He played not one but two make-up shows at SoFi several weeks later, but not before hauling his enormous set all the way across the continent, at great expense, to perform two other make-up shows for what had been the tour's intended opening date in his hometown of Toronto, which had been postponed minutes before doors opened due to a countrywide wireless outage. The make-up concerts were rapturously received, and the triumphant SoFi dates even became a concert film.
The Weeknd continued the tour across Europe in 2023 and Australia last fall, and will conclude it with another global trek later this year. But the impact of the moment hasn't faded, and the ensuing self-analysis not only produced his next creative chapter -- it may have led him to close the book on the Weeknd itself, the persona that's made him a superstar.
"I knew that I really needed to sit the fuck down and figure out my life," he says. "To understand what happened, face it, learn something new and start again. I'd had a kind of a mental breakdown, which is pretty much what this new album's about."
* * *
If there's one character trait that everyone who knows the Weeknd can confirm, it's that he doesn't do anything by half. So it's very on brand that he channeled the above experience and the ensuing self-analysis into not one, but two ambitious projects: the "Hurry Up Tomorrow" album and film.
The album, out Jan. 24, is the final installment in the trilogy the singer began with 2020's blockbuster "After Hours" and continued with 2022's lower-key "Dawn FM." Together, the albums comprise a loose narrative involving a semi-autobiographical character experiencing a dark night of the soul, as the Weeknd puts it, "touching on a kind of purgatory and getting to the darkest part until you find the light at the end of the tunnel." Despite the heavy themes, the albums have produced six of those record-breaking billion-plus-streaming songs on Spotify, including "Blinding Lights," "Heartless" and the chart-topping duet with Grande, "Save Your Tears."
The film, due May 16 via Lionsgate, is a suspense thriller co-written by and starring the Weeknd alongside Jenna Ortega ("Wednesday," "Jane the Virgin") and Barry Keoghan ("Saltburn," "The Banshees of Inisherin"). Loosely connected to the album, the film was directed by Trey Edward Shults, known for the 2019 drama "Waves" and the 2017 horror film "It Comes at Night." Shults wrote the film with the Weeknd and "Idol" co-writer Reza Fahim.
While the Weeknd, who turns 35 in February, shies away from revealing details about the film, broadly speaking, it continues the "After Hours" theme of a character struggling with his sense of self and delves deeply into the psychology of fame. Both the film's original script and the new album were overhauled to incorporate the aftereffects of the Weeknd's experience at SoFi.
"I had a good chunk of the album done, but then [SoFi] happened, and other things happened after, and you go right back to the drawing board," the Weeknd says. "Because this was a really important, pinnacle moment in my life. How could it not be? And as an artist, you're telling a story, so you get under the hood and try to figure out what's going on. In the process, I got closer, and I became more grateful -- I know it sounds cliché and soft or whatever, but it's the truth. I've been working on myself to not push people away."
As he worked on the projects, "getting hit with the moment of 'This could be all gone,' it's almost like my whole life flashed before my eyes," he recalls. "And then I started thinking about family -- my mother, my father, the people in my life. It's just really hard to -- " He stops short. "I didn't think I'd get so deep into this! I don't want to give away too much."
* * *
Bringing that vision into a cohesive album is challenge enough, but making it into a coherent film is no small endeavor. The Weekend and co-writer Fahim set their sights on Shults early, after being especially impressed with his work on "Waves."
The Weeknd recalls, "I gave him [the script], and said, 'I need you to see yourself in this film, that's really the only way it's gonna work.' He did, and he brought in a whole new element that's very personal to him as well."
Shults tells Variety, "From our first meeting, that's what emboldened me: He really wanted me to make this my film and bring myself to it. And I was blown away by how well he responds to direction as an actor: There would be days where I was ready to walk away from a scene, thinking we got it, and he would ask for another take and push the scene to a new level. I don't think people realize yet what a good actor he is."
The Weeknd gushes when talking about his co-stars, Ortega and Keoghan. "Jenna brought so much depth to the character," he says. "There was a scene where Trey and I looked at each other like, 'On paper, this is just ridiculous -- how is it going to translate on screen?' And she said, 'I have an idea.' She led that whole scene -- none of it was rehearsed, and a lot of my reactions in it are not acting."
Ortega says, "Abel is such a sweetheart, and really looked out for everyone on our set. It was so great getting to know him and help bring his vision to life."
Keoghan "was a friend of mine prior to all this," the Weeknd continues, "and he was always number one on my list for his role. What makes him different from Jenna is that his talent is so raw, it just comes so naturally to him."
Keoghan tells Variety, "It's so nice to collaborate with such a close friend, but also an artist who has expressed so much of himself through one medium and is now channeling it through another."
Musically, the "Hurry Up Tomorrow" album includes plenty of the sleek, chrome-plated hooks that have characterized many of the Weeknd's biggest hits. But to a degree he hasn't really done before, it also includes explorations of other genres: classic R&B, straight pop, acoustic guitars, fast beats and an epic, sweeping song, probably the finale, that recalls Prince's "Purple Rain."
It also features several major special guests, most of whom the Weeknd declined to make public just yet. However, one is pioneering producer-composer Giorgio Moroder, who is best known for his work with Donna Summer on iconic disco-era hits like "I Feel Love" and "Love to Love You Baby," but was actually more influential to the Weeknd for his film scores, particularly "Midnight Express" and "Scarface."
"Giorgio is a huge inspiration for this album," the Weeknd says of Moroder, who contributed keyboards, arrangements and vocals to "Hurry Up Tomorrow." "His DNA has always been in all of my music, but I'm really honing in on it here, especially the operatic synths in 'Scarface.' This album feels almost like an opera to me," he concludes, "this gothic, operatic finale to the trilogy."
Moroder tells Variety, "I'm thrilled to continue bridging the gap with Abel between the past and the future, creating something timeless yet innovative."
With such a dream team of collaborators on the album and film, "Sometimes I even felt like, 'Why not just tell the same story but with a different actor?,'" the Weeknd muses, "because it's all kind of meta. But to connect it with the album, I felt like it was the only way to close the chapter."
* * *
There's no need to describe the Weeknd's Los Angeles home because you can see it in great detail in "The Idol." Yet as our car pulls past the security at the front gate and into the circular driveway on this mid-December evening, the strange sense of being at the location where Tedros, the singer's loathsome character in the show, committed dark acts is made even more surreal by the fact that the house is completely tricked out with Christmas decorations: wreaths and reindeer and hundreds of lights outdoors and two large, fully decorated trees inside.
The Weeknd's love for the holiday season is reflected in this issue's cover shoot too. "There was an idea to make [a themed cover] that fit with the album and whatnot," he says, now, relaxing on a couch before a fire in his cozy living room. "But then I was just like, 'The album's coming out in the winter, so let's make people feel like we're in the winter!' I'm a snow child, right? It's just a 'Happy 2025!'"
The Weeknd's friendly demeanor and his rather adorable love for the holidays (he has Renny Harlin's 1996 Christmas-themed thriller "The Long Kiss Goodnight" cued up to watch after our interview) can be jarringly at odds with the Weeknd, the often-dark persona he's embodied for more than a dozen years. That entity emerged in 2011 as a previously unknown, shadowy figure who didn't even have a publicity photo, but had released a mixtape, "House of Balloons" -- for free, on his website -- that changed the sound of R&B and much of pop music.
The son of Ethiopian immigrants, he was raised in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough by his mother and grandmother. "It was tough growing up where I was from," he said the first time Variety interviewed him back in 2020. "I got into a lot of trouble, got kicked out of school, moved to different schools and finally dropped out."
He showed musical talent early but was more of a movie buff; he'd hoped to attend film school but ended up pursuing music because he "couldn't really make a movie to feel better, you know?" he says. "Music was very direct therapy; it was immediate, and people liked it. It definitely saved my life."
A rebellious teen, the Weeknd left home and was unhoused for a time (a period depicted in his 2020 song "Snowchild"), but when success arrived, it came fast: "House of Balloons," which he'd released at the age of 21, saw him arriving seemingly as a fully formed artist. It lit up the music world in 2011 with its dark and unusual take on R&B, imaginative samples and most of all, his crystalline, unmistakable voice. Two more mixtapes followed in rapid succession, and by the end of the year, he had signed a major deal with Republic Records, which remains his label.
While his music and his profile were initially dark and a bit obscure -- he didn't even play his first concert until after "House of Balloons" was released -- when he pivoted to pop, he went big. He shifted his voice into a Michael Jackson-esque range and collaborated with producer-songwriter Max Martin, the most successful hitmaker of the past 25 years, as well as Grande, Drake, Eminem and others. While that first mainstream pop album, "Kiss Land," met with a mixed response, he doubled down with 2015's "Beauty Behind the Madness," which spawned two multiplatinum singles that topped the Billboard Hot 100, "Can't Feel My Face" and "The Hills." The follow-up, 2016's "Starboy," was even bigger, with collaborations with Daft Punk, Del Rey and Kendrick Lamar and three top 5 hits.
Yet it was all a prelude to "After Hours." Advanced by "Blinding Lights," the album was released at the beginning of the pandemic and provided a kind of salve for homebound fans; it spawned multiple hit singles and led directly to his invitation to headline the 2021 Super Bowl halftime show. The "After Hours Til Dawn" tour, originally scheduled to launch in June 2020, finally got underway 25 months later and despite the bumps detailed above, is one of the most successful of all time, grossing more than $350 million -- a figure that will grow considerably after its final legs launch this year and, presumably, carry into 2026 and possibly beyond.
Apart from the occasional mixed response to an album or a single, the only major hiccup, at least critically, was "The Idol." Preceded by breathless reports of production problems and lurid content, its graphic sex scenes (which were spectacularly unsexy by design) and the Weeknd's abusive character garnered more than a few negative responses. It's not something he's eager to discuss, but after some initial resistance, he returns to it.
"We had a great cast and great crew. I made some really great friends, and I love seeing everybody thriving," he says, mentioning co-stars Depp, Rachel Sennott, Troye Sivan and Moses Sumney. "I'm really proud of it -- we all are. It's unfortunate that, you know, it wasn't met with the warmest [response], but we knew what we were making -- something provocative and dark. Maybe it could have been told in a different way, maybe not. It was bigger than I expected. Not everything you put out is going to connect, and that's fine. If it doesn't, then" -- he shrugs -- "it was a time."
He continues, "Believe it or not, none of [the criticism] felt personal. Of course, it gets to you -- I'm not saying I wasn't affected by it; I'm saying I didn't take it personally. Like, nobody's out to get you, you know? I love reading criticism, even if some of it didn't feel constructive. I'm not expecting everybody to love 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' either. Some people might hate it, but that's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing it because I'm an artist; it's how I feel, and this is what I want to say."
* * *
Ironically, "Hurry Up Tomorrow," the "After Hours" album trilogy and "The Idol" all are based in something that Abel Tesfaye the person has worked hard to avoid for his entire career: the drama of fame. He doesn't go out much, rarely gives interviews, has been with the same management team since 2011 and only plays the industry game to the extent that he has to. Yet the shadowy way in which he arrived with "House of Balloons" -- and the fact that, initially, the attention was based entirely on his music -- has enabled him to avoid many of those trappings.
"People get consumed, especially now, by the concept of being famous," he says. "And I'm not good at being famous -- I never will be. I've always been reserved. I don't like going out, and I never wanted to be the face of the music; I wanted to write for other musicians. I have no desire to be great at that part of it, and I don't put myself out there as much as a lot of my peers -- not to take away from them. I really do think it is a talent in its own right. But I've been lucky enough to not have to do that."
One reason is that in many ways the Weeknd is a character for him to inhabit, a costume to put on when he goes onstage or picks up a mic. And like many such costumes, it's one he may have outgrown. While discussing the new album during this interview, he reveals -- slowly, maybe reluctantly, perhaps not completely intentionally -- that he might be retiring the Weeknd.
He's spoken broadly about it in the past, but the possibility was advanced by billboards that appeared in major cities at the end of December, a couple of weeks after this interview, presumably teasing tour dates, that appeared to say "The Weeknd Is Near" but with blank spaces in place of three letters, so they read "The End Is Near." He seemed to move closer to confirming it a few days later, posting images from all of his albums with the caption "The Weeknd / The End Is Near / 8 beautiful chapters in this story."
During the interview, after a couple of references to "closing this chapter," he's asked which chapter, exactly, he is referring to -- the "After Hours" trilogy or his existence as the Weeknd?
After a 30-second pause, he says, "I would say my existence as the Weeknd."
He continues, slowly, "It's a headspace I've gotta get into that I just don't have any more desire for. I feel like it comes with so much ..." He trails off before continuing: "You have a persona, but then you have the competition of it all. It becomes this rat race: more accolades, more success, more shows, more albums, more awards and more No. 1s. It never ends until you end it."
Not surprisingly, the moment at SoFi played a role as well. "Part of me actually was thinking, 'You lost your voice because it's done; you said what you had to say. Don't overstay at the party -- you can end it now and live a happy life.' You know? Put the bow on it: 'Hurry Up Tomorrow'? Now we're here. When is the right time to leave, if not at your peak? Once you understand who I am too much, then it's time to pivot."
To be clear, he's not saying he's quitting music: "I don't think I can stop doing that," he says emphatically. "But everything needs to feel like a challenge. And for me right now, the Weeknd, whatever that is, it's been mastered. No one's gonna do the Weeknd better than me, and I'm not gonna do it better than what it is right now. I think I've overcome every challenge as this persona, and that's why I'm really excited about this film, because I love this challenge.
"But I just want to know what comes after," he concludes, looking into the fire. "I want to know what tomorrow looks like."
