The Weeknd is ready to embrace vulnerability

Express Tribune

16-05-2025

Abel Tesfaye, or as famously known by his stage name The Weeknd, is not crying. But he's no longer hiding either. In his new film Hurry Up Tomorrow, a psychological thriller he co-wrote, produced, scored, and stars in, Tesfaye does what might have once seemed unthinkable: he lets himself be seen: raw, scared, grieving, soft. Not The Weeknd, just Abel.
"I feel grateful I got to film my persona and burn it," he tells The Guardian matter-of-factly, as if setting fire to the character that built the most streamed song in history is just another Tuesday. "The Weeknd felt like a 15-year film. And with this, I got to say: cut."
Cut, indeed. Hurry Up Tomorrow is part fever dream, part ego death, and fully an exorcism of The Weeknd's carefully constructed walls. The film opens on Tesfaye, playing a fictionalised version of himself, spiraling after heartbreak, fame fatigue, and emotional repression catch up with him mid-flight. Cue a surreal unraveling of the persona that once turned self-destruction into an aesthetic. It's not subtle but neither is the shift happening within Tesfaye himself.
"Men have this forcefield," he explains. "We want to come off as invincible. Vulnerability is something you run away from. But to me, now? Vulnerability is punk."
The irony isn't lost on him. This is the same artist who once turned nihilism and numbness into chart-topping poetry. But even The Weeknd couldn't out-sing what his body was trying to say. In the middle of his global After Hours til Dawn tour, Tesfaye lost his voice mid-show. "I found out later it was a panic attack," he says. "My body gave up. I think my body was just telling me: you can't sing it away anymore. You have to figure it out."
Aftermath of a breakdown
So he did. And instead of trying to armour back up, Tesfaye did something quieter and braver: he stayed open. The result is a film that's less about the pop spectacle and more about the person behind it, his fears, his past, his longing for connection. It's therapy disguised as cinema. "Before we started filming, I went through the healing I needed to go through. I had to shed that skin," he says. "I was able to face my child self."
And if Tesfaye is facing the child version of himself, he's also forgiving him. When a scene in the film, set on a private jet, portrays him sobbing over a breakup, it's easy to connect it to his real life. He's spoken before about his father leaving when he was young. But when asked directly if the film's emotional core is autobiographical, he lets out a sly "Nope", followed by a knowing smile.
Still, it's clear he's not interested in hiding behind metaphor anymore. "We all deal with abandonment," he says more generally. "And forgiveness is key." That message extends to Hurry Up Tomorrow's entire ethos: heartbreak isn't shameful, softness isn't weakness, and fear doesn't make you fragile, it makes you real. And for someone who spent over a decade shrouded in mystery and mascara, this embrace of emotional transparency isn't just a narrative shift. It's a creative one too. "This was the first time I wasn't hiding behind music," he says. "It was like a therapy session for all of us."
He doesn't just mean the cast. Tesfaye co-created the film with childhood friends, turning what could've been a vanity project into something more intimate. "It felt like a group session," he adds.
And so, The Weeknd, the persona, is gone. What's left is Abel Tesfaye, still stylish, still meticulous, but finally human. No longer singing through pain, but speaking through it.
"If something isn't bigger than the last thing you did, it's considered a failure by the masses," he says with a shrug. "But I don't want to be identified with something I started at 19." That 19-year-old built an empire out of heartbreak. But this version is building something even more radical: honesty.
And if that means crying on a private jet in front of the whole world, so be it. Vulnerability is punk. And Abel Tesfaye has never sounded more free.