It’s not every day that you get the chance to work with a legendary musician, and when the opportunity arises, you grab it. At least that’s what Barry Keoghan, Jenna Ortega and director Trey Edward Shults thought when they were approached about working with The Weeknd (who is credited by his real name, Abel Tesfaye) on his upcoming music-forward film Hurry Up Tomorrow. The film, which hits theaters on May 16, is semi-autobiographical and features music from The Weeknd’s latest album, also titled Hurry Up Tomorrow, but it’s not exactly a visual album.
“I knew this was going to be an experience and a unique movie,” Keoghan tells Parade ahead of the movie’s release. “I wanted to be part of Abel’s vision, and I’m a massive fan of Trey and a massive fan of Jenna. It’s a no-brainer when you see that on a page, and I’m up for this sort of challenge of it all.”
Hurry Up Tomorrow is certainly a singular project. Tesfaye plays a fictional musician who goes by Abel/The Weeknd as his fame drives him into madness, with Ortega playing a mysterious woman he crosses paths with and Keoghan as a calming force on Abel/The Weeknd’s management team. It’s not a biopic, not a music video, not a drama and not a documentary, but some melding of them all. Tesfaye and Shults cite a bevy of inspiration for the project, including musician-forward projects like Prince‘s Purple Rain and Pink Floyd‘s The Wall, as well as traditional films like Raging Bull, Persona and Jacob’s Ladder.
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Interestingly enough, Tesfaye dreamt up the idea for Hurry Up Tomorrow, the movie, before putting together his album of the same name. He didn’t even write most of the movie’s/album’s music until after filming had wrapped.
“I was in a unique position where I was able to score to picture and write music to picture,” he says about the process. “It was maybe two records that were actually complete [before filming], and then the final song, which I had to write the day before I performed it. So those were the only couple songs that were done. After that, I got to write lyrics that bring scenes out, and some scenes that didn’t make the film, I got to turn into songs.”
Writing a song the night before you film an entire scene based around it certainly seems nerve-wracking. “I blacked out that week,” Tesfaye says. “Definitely a lot of pressure, but look, writing and performing a song, it’s a very vulnerable moment.”
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Tesfaye’s decision to create Hurry Up Tomorrow makes a lot more sense after realizing that the Super Bowl Halftime performer is also quite the cinephile. In fact, he hand-selected his collaborators based on their previous work.
“Abel wanted to meet,” Shults says, beginning the story of how he joined the project.
“Huge fan,” Tesfaye interrupts. It was Shults’ film Waves that inspired him to reach out.
“I could tell he was a genuine huge fan, too,” Shults remembers of their first meeting. “We basically connected over an idea, and honestly, I was in a little bit of a rut after Waves. I was kind of depressed and not excited about movies, and that’s why it’s been a minute. Then I started getting inspiration again, but the the first time I got the full light bulb, excited inspiration with writing and a project was this. After our meeting, we ran with that momentum. We met in October, I wrote the outline with Abel in November, there was a draft by December, and we were shooting in February.”
But Shults wasn’t the only member of the team Tesfaye courted. “I was a huge fan of Sacred Deer,” Tesfaye says regarding Keoghan’s film The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Such a fan that Tesfaye went up to Keoghan at a party and introduced himself well before Hurry Up Tomorrow was in the works. “I always knew you were gonna play [the part] if you would accept the role.”
For Ortega, who was coming off the success of Wednesday, the atmosphere that Shults and Tesfaye fostered on the Hurry Up Tomorrow set appealed to her.
“I was kind of unsure what to do,” she says about selecting projects after Wednesday. “I swear my career was almost like night and day. It all just opened up. So I was taking meetings, and Trey and Abel are such incredibly kind, warm, just comfortable people to be around, and are such cinephiles and fans of movie themselves. It instantly was apparent to me that this was a team that I wanted to be associated with…It just felt like a very collaborative space, so that’s why I joined.”
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While one may think that working with someone as famous as The Weeknd, and someone without much acting experience to boot, could be difficult, Keoghan describes the shoot as “comfy.” Ortega echoes that sentiment: “It felt very relaxed in the best way possible.”
Keoghan also compared working on Hurry Up Tomorrow to working on “student movies where everyone’s just there to get it, and everyone’s on the same page.”
Collaborating so closely with Tesfaye also gave Keoghan the opportunity to witness a massive superstar on an intimate level. Keoghan was recently cast to play Ringo Starr of The Beatles in an upcoming biopic, and when asked if he’ll be channeling any of his experience with The Weeknd into his Ringo performance, he responded in the affirmative.
“Yeah, I know Abel as Abel, and that’s sort of a different thing. I can really separate the two. And for me, this movie even puts Abel in a different place that I think I’ve never seen Abel,” says Keoghan of his time with Tesfaye. “It’s sort of like we’re seeing a new person. I’m always curious and observant, and I take in what I can.”
Hurry Up Tomorrow premieres in theaters on May 16.
