The model and actress reflects on fame, privacy, and growing up, as she channels her inner pop star in photos inspired by her edgy new HBO series.
ocelyn is a machine. Jocelyn gyrates like a Tilt-A-Whirl and favors spangled outfits that look like they’re held together by dental floss. Underboob, throngs of paparazzi, nightclubs, cocaine, and S&M feature prominently in her lifestyle, at least if the trailer for HBO’s upcoming blockbuster series The Idol is anything to go by.
Jocelyn also couldn’t be further from the self-effacing woman I’m speaking to, who (a) apologizes for being a few minutes late to our interview because she’s dealing with a gastrointestinally challenged cat, and (b) goes on to note how important punctuality is to her.
FELIX COOPER
Dress, $7,350, earrings, $925, rings, $600 each, Chanel.
Later today, on set, she’ll transform back into the vampish pop star, but right now, at her mom’s place in Los Angeles, Lily-Rose Depp is dressed down in a plain black camisole, her shoulder-length hair slightly tousled. The only thing she seems to share with her character is a sultry voice, which sounds as if a Juul took human form.
But when she stepped into Jocelyn’s platform stilettos, the 23-year-old model and actress found that singing and memorizing choreography weren’t the biggest challenges to completing her pop-princess metamorphosis. “It was more about understanding how alone you can feel, even when everybody’s watching you,” Depp says.
FELIX COOPER
Bikini top, $800, pants, $9,900, pumps, $1,500, Chanel. Earrings, Chanel Fine Jewelry, $9,250. Watch, Chanel Watch, $7,500.
Think of the moments of mundane heartache that run beneath the surface of otherwise glamorous lives: Katy Perry sobbing under the stage in Katy Perry: Part of Me; Madonna taking time out from her Blonde Ambition tour to visit her mother’s grave in Madonna: Truth or Dare; or any paparazzi footage of Britney Spears circa 2007. The titular idol of the series—co-created and executive produced by Sam Levinson (Euphoria), Abel Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd, and Reza Fahim—isn’t explicitly modeled after any of these women, though Depp does name-check Madonna, Spears, and Mariah Carey as reference points.
“There’s nothing more fun to me than sinking my teeth into something and trying to understand it through and through,” she says, adding that she also looked beyond the concert arena for inspiration—to Old Hollywood figures like Gene Tierney in Laura and Lauren Bacall, as well as their across-the-pond counterparts Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. Depp doesn’t just share sloe eyes with those classic stars—she has a similar craving for mystique.
FELIX COOPER
Jacket, $4,000, top, $3,550, rings, $600 each, sneakers, $1,300, Chanel. Panty, Lúelle NYC, $38
Her predilection for privacy isn’t surprising: Fame is something she’s had to spend a lifetime grappling with as the daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis. Growing up, “my parents protected my brother [Jack] and me from it as much as possible,” she says. “I know my childhood didn’t look like everybody’s childhood, and it’s a very particular thing to deal with, but it’s also the only thing that I know.”
Similarly, she’s chosen to avoid commenting on the recent headlines about her famous father: “When it’s something that’s so private and so personal that all of a sudden becomes not so personal…I feel really entitled to my secret garden of thoughts. I also think that I’m not here to answer for anybody, and I feel like for a lot of my career, people have really wanted to define me by the men in my life, whether that’s my family members or my boyfriends, whatever. And I’m really ready to be defined for the things that I put out there.”
FELIX COOPER
Top, $2,450, shorts, $4,100, white handbag, $4,600, black handbag, $3,450, ring, $600, sandals, $1,550, Chanel.
Even though Depp’s mother is a huge star in her native France, Paradis’s kids mostly got to see her as Mom. “It was really cool for me and my brother to see our mom being the ultimate comforting and loving person, but also having such a rich, full life of her own, watching her go onstage and sing for thousands of people, and just be so in her own zone and in touch with herself and her art.” As a little kid, Depp idolized her mom to the point that she’d ask her what she was going to wear that day, then pull a similar look out of her own closet so that she could be her mom’s mini-me.
FELIX COOPER
Dress, $4,800, earrings, $925, sandals, $1,550, Chanel. Background clothes and accessories, all, Chanel.
With this new role, Depp is again following in her mom’s chart-topping footsteps. Though confronting fame as an adult has been “a weird thing to navigate,” she admits: “It’s different experiencing it firsthand rather than by proxy. I guess it’s something that I’ve had to make my own way with.”
FELIX COOPER
Jumpsuit, $9,500, belt, $1,025, earrings, $925, pumps, $1,500, Chanel. Background clothes and accessories, all, Chanel.
She delineates the distinction between “real-life Lily-Rose” and her more reserved public self. “I say ‘real life’ as if there are two realities,” Depp adds, though for her, there almost are. With friends, she’s “an open book,” she says. “But I’ve just been raised in a manner that has taught me that privacy is something that’s important to protect.” She doesn’t have Twitter (“because I don’t feel like there’s anything I want to say that I can’t say through my work”), and her Instagram is a sedate chronicle of her past and upcoming acting projects and Chanel ads; she’s been an ambassador for the brand since she was 16. She went into her acting career with the idea that “I am here to do my job, and what I really want to put out into the world is my work.”
Not that the work has zero overlap with her life these days. Playing Jocelyn has only caused her to think more critically about the trade-offs that inevitably come with public scrutiny. “It’s kind of a double-edged sword, because when you’re an artist, you make things in the hope that they’re going to connect with somebody. But then it also comes with this thing where people feel like they know you, even though they don’t,” she says. “I’m not here to give myself to the world to be eaten alive.”
FELIX COOPER
Parka, $7,700, cap, $2,225, belt, $3,950, rings, $600 each, pumps, $1,500, Chanel.
When strangers approach her in public, she fears not for her safety, but “that they’re going to think I’m really weird or rude because I just get really shy and kind of anxious,” Depp says. And unfortunately, the anxiety has not dissipated with age and experience. “The older I get, the weirder I become around that whole conversation,” she says. “That’s why I like to do my work and put as much of my heart into it as I can and then retreat back into my real life and just be a normal person.”
On social media, the discomfort is magnified. “People think that you’re a video game character and say all these horrible things about you that they would never say to your face,” she says. “I think we feel a little too protected by our screens.” Increasingly, especially for her generation, there’s little difference between the two. “We spend a lot of time on the internet, and you start to feel like it’s this parallel universe where people in the public eye are just an animal in a zoo or a statue, and you can say whatever the fuck you want to them, even though you wouldn’t say it in person.
FELIX COOPER
Bikini top, $800, brooch, $1,125, Chanel. Earrings, Chanel Fine Jewelry, $9,250. Watch, Chanel Watch, $7,500.
People get really ballsy when they think nobody’s looking or reading, and so I try not to read [comments] because no matter what you do, you’re never going to please everybody. I can work my ass off to put work out there that I’m proud of and that I hope people will connect with, but there are always going to be some people who don’t like me or have a problem with me or think that I’m stupid or ugly or whatever,” she says. “At the end of the day, what really matters to me is what my family and friends and loved ones think of me.”
FELIX COOPER
Speaking of internet opinions, has she heard about the whole “nepo baby” conversation? She laughs dryly: “I’m familiar.” Depp sounds resigned to it, which is maybe all one can be in her situation. “The internet seems to care a lot about that kind of stuff. People are going to have preconceived ideas about you or how you got there, and I can definitely say that nothing is going to get you the part except for being right for the part,” she says. “The internet cares a lot more about who your family is than the people who are casting you in things. Maybe you get your foot in the door, but you still just have your foot in the door. There’s a lot of work that comes after that.”
She does find it “interesting,” however, that she rarely hears anyone refer to a man as a nepo baby. “It’s weird to me to reduce somebody to the idea that they’re only there because it’s a generational thing. It just doesn’t make any sense. If somebody’s mom or dad is a doctor, and then the kid becomes a doctor, you’re not going to be like, ‘Well, you’re only a doctor because your parent is a doctor.’ It’s like, ‘No, I went to medical school and trained.’” Ever careful, she’s quick to add that she is by no means comparing her own work to that of someone in the medical field. “I just hear it a lot more about women, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence.”
