An Idol Mind

As The Weeknd, Abel Tesfaye leveraged an auteur-scale vision to become an unlikely megastar. With a seamy Hollywood fantasia of an HBO series on the way, he's realizing his grandest ambition

- By Dan Adler. Photographs by Mark Seliger

On the night of the Oscars in March, Abel Tesfaye had The Larry Sanders Show on in his kitchen.

He's been watching a lot of '90s TV, he explained in a quick patter as he walked across the tennis court in his Bel-Air backyard: The Ben Stiller Show and then Mr. Show and then, diving further into Bob Odenkirk's early career, Larry Sanders.

"Which has become my favorite TV show now," he said.

"It is fucking brilliant."

He kept picking up steam. "It's groundbreaking," Tesfaye went on. "It's like the birth of that behind-the-scenes meta comedy type, like The Office and Arrested Development and all that, where it feels like it's blurred between what's real, what's not."