Trey Edward Shults and Abel Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd, are excited for fans to see the culmination of their professional and friendly partnership, Hurry Up Tomorrow.

The film, which follows a musician suffering from insomnia who gets visited by a mysterious stranger, is a fictionalized yet semi-autobiographical story about a point in Tesfaye’s life. Tesfaye co-wrote the screenplay with Shults and Reza Fahim.

Blavity/Shadow and Act Managing Editor Trey Mangum spoke with Tesfaye and Shults about their collaboration, which began after Tesfaye watched Shults’ second film, It Comes at Night.

The Weekend was a fan of ‘It Comes at Night’ and ‘Waves’

“I don’t know if I’ve ever said this before, but It Comes at Night was the first time I’d seen [one of Shults’ movies],” said Tesfaye. “I saw it and I was automatically just taken by it because…how they portrayed it in the trailers was a specific type of film. So I went expecting just like a horror film, you know? And then I…left the theater just getting so much more from it. …I loved it.”

The Weekend said, “I tweeted about it,” with Shults adding, “I was in the bathtub in London doing press, and I was really happy. Like, ‘Oh, The Weeknd liked my movie.”

Tesfaye also watched Shults’ third film, Waves, when it was playing at the Toronto International Film Festival at the same time Tesfaye was there for Uncut Gems.

“We went to go watch it at TIFF, and the first sequence where Kelvin [Harrison Jr.] and Alexa [Demie] are driving…and the whole time I’m like, They’re about to crash…it’s about to be the most horrifying, most brutal [moment]…because the intensity and the suspense that you built up just in that sequence. What I got by the end of the film…it felt like a real passion project. Like something he was really trying to get off his chest, and there wasn’t a single dry eye in the theater,” Tesfaye said.

Working on ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’

Fast forward, Tesfaye and Shults have a meeting about Hurry Up Tomorrow, with Tesfaye feeling that Shults was the perfect person to help him tell his story.

“I definitely went into that meeting not thinking that my next movie was going to be a movie with Abel,” said Shults. “I was just like, ‘It’s an opportunity, I’m [with] The Weeknd, whatever. And then I was like, ‘I freaking love this guy…he genuinely gets and digs my movies and we like the same movies.”

“He has this idea that’s like his jumping off point [and] is like a very vulnerable thing. He wants to explore one of the worst things that’s happened to him, especially in his professional career,” Shults continued. “And I’m like, ‘If that’s the jumping off point, where else can we take this? It was really, really exciting to me. …You know, 99 percent of public, famous pop stars would not want their image associated with every bold swing and every exciting thing in the movie. I got an inspiration for the outline, and I told my wife, ‘This would be amazing. He’s never gonna let us make it, but it would be awesome.’ And then when he was down for everything and he was excited by the bolder and riskier we wanted to do stuff…the more exciting it was for him.”

Tesfaye said that the most important thing for him is to make sure that the audience connects to the human element at the center of his story.

“Look, I think the biggest goal for me is to make the film as human as possible so when people leave the film, they can connect with it a certain way,” Tesfaye said. “Of course, you’re watching a celebrity, but the film was never supposed to be about celebrity culture ever. It’s supposed to connect with people. And I feel like the only way I can really do it without coming off like, ‘Woe is me in my gilded cage’ [is] if people can connect with it in any way. I think it’s most important for me.”

Check out the full interview above. Hurry Up Tomorrow, also starring Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan, is now in theaters. The accompanying album by Tesfaye is also available to buy and stream.

Trey Edward Shults

Get relevant content delivered to you once a week