The pressures of fame and identity are at the center of “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” the new concert film-turned-psychological thriller that marks Abel Tesfaye’s first major film role.
At the film’s New York premiere at AMC Lincoln Square 13 on Tuesday, Tesfaye (or, as the world knows him, The Weeknd) spoke to Variety about his life in the spotlight.
“I think it’s a skill to be famous,” Tesfaye he said. “It can really be a full-time job — and I just have no interest in that. I think I’m good at hiding.”
The film reimagines the 2022 incident where Tesfaye lost his voice in front of 80,000 fans at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. “I was there that night and lived it with him,” composer Nathon Salon recalled. “I was working on music behind the scenes and everybody was just freaking out. You didn’t know how to react.”
Salon described how the crew huddled around the Weeknd and offered moral support after he called off the show. The singer later learned that psychological stress, not a physical condition, caused his stinted voice. Tesfaye said he used this experience to fuel his art, ultimately learning the value of not “psyching yourself out” and embracing failure.
“Failure sucks, but don’t be scared of it,” Tesfaye said. “Embrace it. That’s the best school. You can’t teach failure in a class. You just gotta live life, learn from it, and it’ll get better no matter what.”
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” also stars Jenna Ortega as Anima, a love interest who tries to pull the truth out of Abel, and Barry Keoghan as Lee, his volatile best friend. “Sometimes I guess it’s hard to ignore, but I really would rather not think about fame,” Ortega said. “It’s a waste of time to dwell over something like that. It’s so silly in the bigger picture.”
As Ortega grew closer with Tesfaye while working on “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” she was “very fascinated” to learn about how his relationship with fame as a musician differed from hers as an actor. “I think musicians have it much harder,” she said. “I’m an actor and I get to hide behind the characters. They’re representing themselves. People think they’re getting to know musicians for who they are, they don’t see it as the performance that it occasionally is.”
Writer-director Trey Edward Shults, best known for the 2019 indie hit “Waves,” expects audiences will interpret the film in different ways. “It’s about putting a persona on and being a different person than you are with yourself in a different place,” Shults said. “It’s easy for us to just look at the personas of these people and be like, ‘Whatever, their lives are perfect.’”
At the premiere’s afterparty at Boom on the High Line, Ortega posed for pictures with fans, Keoghan enthusiastically showed off baby photos of his son Brando and Tesfaye spent most of the night holding court at the DJ booth.
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“For me, it’s all foreign and not part of my normal world,” Shults said, describing what it’s like to hang out with his famous cast. “It’s just like the little things. The way that security has to be with them. Every step that they take needs to be considered. But everything I’ve observed of them with fans is very sweet and beautiful.”
See more photos from the premiere and party below.
