Jocelyn, in the beginning, was portrayed as the victim in The Idol, but we soon realized that there was a lot about her that we were unaware of. We perceived her as a person who had gone through a lot, who had lost her mother, who was not doing well professionally, who felt lost and didn’t know where her life was heading, and more than anything, who feared that one day, she would lose all that she had built. We saw her as the underdog who had once risen to the pinnacle of success and fame, but fate had pulled her down, and she was now trying to find her ground once again and bring back the good old times. We liked that image of Jocelyn, but Sam Levinson had other plans, and till we reached the end of The Idol, the narrative entirely discredited her and made her look like an extremely toxic person who was surely not in a stable state of mind and was probably suffering from some kind of disorder.
Spoilers Alert
Did Jocelyn Leak Her Own Picture?
Shrewd and calculative were not the kind of adjectives that we associated with Jocelyn, and we gave her the benefit of doubt for the first 3 episodes of The Idol. But slowly, we started to understand that maybe she was not as innocent as we perceived her to be. There were layers in her personality that, with time, started peeling off like an onion, and we could see that it was not only Tedros who was the problem here as Jocelyn was equally responsible for what was happening. Now, when we look back in retrospect, we have doubts about who leaked that picture of Jocelyn at the beginning of the show. Jocelyn’s entire team tried to control the damage, and they were also scared that it might make the starlet even more depressed, but what if she was the one who orchestrated the entire thing? What if she was the one who leaked it so that she could get some publicity?
It may have been possible that Jocelyn felt a lack of inspiration and wanted to buy some more time, which the music label was not ready to give her. The music label’s main concern was that people would forget her if she didn’t produce a new single soon, and maybe that’s why Jocelyn found an easy way to stay relevant and give people something to talk about. We wouldn’t have believed it if somebody had told us this after the second episode of The Idol. But as the story progressed and we got to know how she attracted toxic behavior because it seemingly brought out the best in her, we can pretty much believe that it might have been a cheap marketing ploy that she did not hesitate to incorporate. There were precedents where a celebrity got a lot of sympathy after someone leaked their picture, and maybe Jocelyn wanted the same thing for herself. This would have been just speculation if Jocelyn hadn’t acted the way she did after losing her mother, but after knowing the lies she told to manipulate everybody around her, we know that she was capable of doing it.
Why Did Jocelyn Lie About The Hairbrush Incident?
The biggest revelation is made in the last episode of The Idol, where we learn that Jocelyn lied about the fact that her mother used to hit her with a hairbrush. Tedros was as shocked as we were when he figured it out for himself. Up until then, the man had not realized the kind of woman he was dealing with, but that incident stunned him, as he had not imagined in his wildest dreams that the innocent-looking woman was capable of something like this. We think that Jocelyn genuinely didn’t know that Tedros had wanted to meet her for a long time, and that’s why he had asked Dyanne to bring her to his club. But after spending some time with him, she would have realized that this man had a real eye for talent, and maybe she somehow wanted to use it for her own benefit. In the end, she did portray to the audience that Izaak, Chloe, and all the other exceptional singers were her finds and that she had given them a platform since she recognized their talent. She took credit for what Tedros had done, and we believe that it would have been her plan since the very beginning.
Coming back to the hairbrush incident, we believe that it had a dual purpose: firstly, it might be the case that Jocelyn’s sensibilities were so crooked and toxic that she actually derived inspiration from getting abused or dominated by a man, and secondly, it enabled her to perform a huge marketing gimmick without actually spending a single penny. She gained sympathy from everyone after she went on social media and confessed how, over the years, she had been abused and mistreated by her own mother and that it had impacted her mental health so much that she was not able to focus on anything in life. It was a morally degrading move, but as far as marketing was concerned, it was a masterstroke.
We saw in the end, during the concert, how much love the people had for her. They were vouching for her; they wanted her to become successful, and Jocelyn had been able to create that connection with the audience without even releasing a single song. We got another piece of evidence that proved how calculative Jocelyn was when she got to know about Rob. She knew the kind of allegation that was being made against him but still she decided not to give a statement supporting him. Jocelyn knew that Rob was innocent and that it was Tedros who had spread that rumor, but she also knew that if she said something and it sparked a debate, her upcoming concert might get affected by it negatively. There was a chance that the public would not have taken her stand well, and they would have blamed her for supporting a man against whom there were allegations of rape. We believe that to stay on the safe side, she abstained from making any sort of statement, even when Rob had pleaded with her to do so.
We’re not in a position to judge if what Jocelyn did was right or wrong, but we do believe that by doing what she did, she lost all the people who loved her unconditionally. We believe that because of the kind of person she was, or had become with time, people would have a really hard time trusting her. She was famous, so she would always have people around her who would be there for their own selfish interests, but she would never have that one true friend, someone like Leia, who would always have her back through thick and thin and who told her the truth irrespective of whether it was pleasant or not.
