BLACKPINK’s Jennie Is About to Enter her Actress Era With ‘The Idol’

It’s a well-known fact among BLINKs that among the four members of BLACKPINK, Jisoo is the one who has always had her eye on an acting career. She famously joined the group’s agency, YG Entertainment, to actually debut as an actress before becoming a part of the trainee project that was going to turn into one of the most successful K-Pop girl groups of all time.

While Jisoo did book her first lead actress gig in 2020 — starring as the main character in the romantic/historical K-Drama Snowdrop — another one of the members is about to follow her on the TV screen— miss Jennie Kim herself. So let’s start from the beginning and break this down.

It all starts with the release of the trailer for The Idol—a new HBO series co-created by the self-proclaimed “twisted minds” of The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) and Sam Levinson, creator of a little show known as Euphoria. From the handful of frames we’ve seen of The Idol, it seems to have a good amount of Euphoria-vibes—including a plot that focuses on young women in some pretty bad situations.

Specifically, The Idol will follow an up-and-coming pop singer, played by actress and model Lily-Rose Depp, who becomes dangerously entangled with a self-help guru and cult leader played by The Weeknd himself. The story will be set against the backdrop of the Hollywood music industry, including parties full of drugs, fast cars and flashing lights. The teaser’s title cards describe the whole affair as “the sleaziest love story in all of Hollywood”.

Someone might say “A drama series? Starring young girls getting exploited by powerful men? In the music industry? Truly groundbreaking, never been done before, sick and twisted indeed” but that’s a whole other discussion for another time.

What we’re here to discuss is that The Idol’s teaser — which didn’t shine any light on when the series might actually premiere, finishing up only with a cryptic “coming soon” — features Jennie Kim in the ranks of its stellar cast. 

A cast that includes the likes of Troye Sivan, Debby Ryan (Insatiable), Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby), Suzanna Son (Red Rocket) and Steve Zissis (Her, Happy Death Day 2U) as well as Melanie Liburd (This Is Us), Tunde Adebimpe, Elizabeth Berkley Lauren (Saved by the Bell), Nico Hiraga (Moxie, Booksmart) and Anne Heche (Another World, Gracie’s Choice).

Jennie’s participation in the series was also confirmed by HBO’s official Twitter account, which announced that “Jennie Kim has been cast in The Idol”. And Jennie herself also spoke about this new venture, in a statement released through her agency to the Korean news agency Yonhap: “I found the script very intriguing, so I wanted to be part of the series. I feel very excited. I’ll work hard, so please watch me with affection”.

While it’s not yet clear what role will Jennie have — her statement was very professionally devoid of any details — we can guess some things from two main sources: the series’ IMDb page and the actual teaser.

On IMDb — where Jennie is credited with her full name, Jennie Kim — it’s stated that she will appear in all of The Idol’s six episodes, making her a recurring actress at the very least if not a full-on series regular. Second of all, there’s a name — her character will be named Anys, so that’s nice to know.

From The Idol’s teaser, it appears that Anys is probably part of Jocelyn’s — the name of Lily-Rose Depp’s character also appears on the series’ IMDb page — friend group, since Jennie can be seen as what appears to be a backup dancer in Jocelyn/Lily-Rose Depp’s music video and the two also have a scene where they go clubbing together. The teaser also featured a snippet of some kind of confrontation between Jennie’s character and The Weeknd’s character.

Even though we don’t know when we will be able to watch The Idol, what we know is definitely enough to start getting hyped for Jennie’s “official” acting debut — since most of her TV and movie work so far has been as herself. In the meantime, we have BLACKPINK’s August comeback to look forward to!

So what do you think? Are you excited for this new chapter in Jennie’s career?

(image: HBO)