After telling Variety in January he’d like to end “my existence as The Weeknd,” the singer born Abel Tesfaye is dropping a lot of hints that his new movie Hurry Up Tomorrow may actually be the way he’s going to do it — and the film’s director agrees.
In the trailer for the movie, we hear not once, but twice, someone say, “Call me by the old, familiar name,” followed by a woman yelling, “Abel!” Asked if the film was specifically designed to be The Weeknd’s “last hurrah,” so to speak, director Trey Edward Shults told Entertainment Weekly that it’s “absolutely” a possibility.
“I tried to make the movie in a way where, for his fans and people who want to approach it at that level, I hope it’s very satisfying and you get a good meal out of it,” Shults said. “And for people that aren’t his fans and don’t know anything about him or even care about the final capping of the Weeknd, I think you still have a great movie to go through.”
Shults says the movie is about “an artist, you could say, on the verge of a mental breakdown.” The director adds, “He meets this woman, and they go on this odyssey together. It’s a mix of psychological thriller and drama.” And Jenna Ortega, who plays the woman, has an interesting interpretation of her role.
She tells EW, “It was my understanding while shooting that my character, Anima, is a version of Abel. A side of him that the persona the Weeknd doesn’t show as much.”
Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
