The Canadian singer, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, has shared little about his personal life throughout the years. A 2015 New York Times profile noted that he dropped out of school at 17, initially living in an apartment with two friends, where they would get by through welfare checks, stealing from supermarkets, and occasionally selling drugs.
After they were evicted, Abel would bed-hop and even tell women that he loved them so that he could have a place to stay. Eventually he found a job folding shirts at an American Apparel store. It was during this time that he would write and record music for himself — and the rest is history.
In a new conversation with Interview magazine, Abel reflected on that time in the context of his upcoming HBO show, The Idol. After naming some of his filmmaking inspirations, he said with a laugh, “I wanted to work at a video store when I was younger.”
“I would walk into one and it’s like, I don’t want to leave,” he continued, noting the now-defunct indie video store Queen Video in downtown Toronto. “I’d go there and I wouldn’t even buy or rent. I’d just look through everything and obsess over films I’d never seen.”
He said, “I didn’t have money. That’s when I was homeless, around 17, 18. I’d just walk in there and pretend I was going to rent something. The reality was, I was just trying to learn about filmmakers and one-ups.”
“Look, it was as complicated as a fucking teenager being homeless in Toronto in 2007, 2008,” Abel added when asked whether his experiences with being unhoused made his “seedy” earlier work autobiographical or escapist. “The struggle — there was something magical about it. There’s something magical about being in this new place and trying to start from the beginning and create your own new narrative as an adult. It was fun.”
“Then a Couple of years go by, and it’s like, ‘Oh, shit, this is kind of dark. We need to figure out what we’re doing in life,'” he said with a laugh. “But yeah, it was complicated. It was nightlife, it was freedom, and I was a sponge. I wrote what I knew, so it was what I was going through, what [La Mar Taylor, Abel’s best friend and creative director] was going through, different stories from that lifetime.”
Abel added, “I’d just take it all and create this body of work out of it, but it’s not too autobiographical. I sensationalize a lot of it. It’s like creating a movie. You gotta make it a little more exciting than it actually is.”
You can read the full interview with The Weeknd here.