Pop girlies are one of the indisputable pillars of queer culture. Nothing will ever compare to the joy of tracking a pop diva’s evolution, like when we watched Lady Gaga go from playing dive bars to performing “Paparazzi” at the VMAs. This is our stock market, and we love to invest early.
Just as delightful? Hollywood flagrantly pandering to gays these days by dropping fictional pop icons into buzzy films and TV shows. In a sense, this phenomenon is nothing new. After all, Chappell Roan has been open about being inspired by Hannah Montana, and Josie and the Pussycats remains a Halloween costume staple more than 20 years after the original film came out.
But in the age of the Renaissance and Eras tours, and amid seemingly never-ending discourse about the state of music fandoms, it’s unsurprising that 2024 alone has given us multiple movies centered around fictional pop stars. There’s Lady Raven (Saleka), the singer whose concert turns into a scheme for catching a serial killer in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap; and Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who is beset by a grinning demon as she prepares to stage a comeback tour in Smile 2.
To honor the latest resurgence of fictional pop stars, I’ve taken it upon myself to rank the six most prominent ones of the 2020s so far from least to most stan-worthy. That means that, yes, unfortunately, characters like Natalie Portman's Vox Lux or Lady Gaga’s Ally Maine from A Star Is Born don’t make the cut. But hey! Hopefully this list will give you a few more faux celebrities to add to your Spotify rotation.
Riley Bina (Don’t Look Up)
Real-life pop star Ariana Grande briefly played fictional pop star Riley Bina in 2021’s Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s gratingly on-the-nose parable about the perils of climate change denialism. Since Riley only shows up in a few scenes, she simply doesn’t have enough screen time to rank higher on this list. Still, I can’t disregard the instant leg-up that she gets from being played by the woman who gave us “Positions.”
Plus, Riley eventually gets in on Don’t Look Up protagonists Randall (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate’s (Jennifer Lawrence) desperate gambit to get the general public to do something about the fact that a planet-destroying meteor is headed for Earth by releasing the song “Just Look Up” alongside Kid Cudi. We stan an environmentally conscious queen! The 2020 celebrity “Imagine” video could never.
Jocelyn (The Idol)
Sam Levinson is still threatening to subject us all to another traumatic Euphoria season, but hey! At least The Idol has seemingly been defeated once and for all. As Rolling Stone previously reported in its investigation into The Idol’s production, the series was originally helmed by Amy Seimetz. However, she was replaced by Levinson 80% of the way through filming, and the HBO series was subject to delays, rewrites, and reshoots after the series’ co-lead, The Weeknd, allegedly complained that Seimetz’s version was leaning too much into the “female perspective.” (A show that purports to be about a pop star played by Lily Rose-Depp embracing the “female perspective?” God forbid! )
If you followed this show when it aired, you’re probably already familiar with the critiques lobbied against it: that it is salacious, sloppily made torture porn; that the Weeknd’s muddled cult leader character Tedros overshadows any attempt at show business satire; et cetera. Arguably the only redeeming quality of The Idol is the fact that Jocelyn’s (Rose-Depp) lead single, “World Class Sinner,” is a bop. If only the show had actually followed through on its premise.
To add insult to injury, there’s a scene in the premiere in which Jocelyn’s team compares her in-universe comeback to Britney Spears releasing “Gimme More.” Britney, sweetie, I’m so sorry! In the Idol universe, I can only hope that Jocelyn’s Gen Z stans rally together to convince her to dump Tedros like the Swifties did with Matty Healy.
Ni’jah (Swarm)
In no way is Swarm’s fictional pop icon Ni’jah (Nirine S. Brown) meant to be an obvious stand-in for Beyoncé, as the Prime Video show’s opening text takes pains to remind you. “This is not a work of fiction,” it reads. “Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or events, is intentional.” Riiiight.
For most of Swarm’s runtime, Ni’jah is as inaccessible to viewers as real-life stars are to their fans, appearing on car radios, TVs, and phone screens long before die-hard stan Dre (Dominique Fishback) actually meets her in the flesh. In the meantime, creators Donald Glover and Janine Nabers clearly have a blast with Bey allusions that even a casual fan could recognize, from naming Ni’jah’s fanbase “the Swarm” in reference to the BeyHive to recreating TMZ footage of Jay-Z and Solange’s infamous 2014 elevator fight shot-for-shot in episode 3.
Because Ni’jah isn’t really the focal point of Swarm, she doesn’t quite crack the top three. But kudos to real-life singer-songwriter Kirby, who filled her catalog with enough soulful bravado to make her worthy of being a proper Beyoncé stand-in. If the real-life inspiration behind the character still isn’t interested in releasing Renaissance visuals, I’ll happily take Ni’jah’s version!
Skye Riley (Smile 2)
I will say this: Kudos to the Smile series for going a more creative route with its sophomore outing. Following the viral success of the original Smile back in 2022, director Parker Finn and his team easily could’ve made a predictable sequel following another medical professional, or chosen to base it around Smile protagonist Rose’s (Sosie Bacon) cop sidekick, Joel (Kyle Gallner).
Instead, they went for something different by siccing the franchise’s demonic entity on a completely different target: fictional pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who’s about to embark on a world tour just a year after a DUI-related driving accident nearly cost her her life. Scott, who I previously only knew as Jasmine from Disney’s live-action Aladdin remake, has the vocal chops and post-bullying-Dua-Lipa-into-learning-dance-moves stage presence to really sell Skye as a believable pop girl. The movie even employs Scream alum Drew Barrymore to deliver some opening exposition!
Unfortunately, Smile 2 moves past its famous musician trappings and into more predictable horror fare a bit too quickly for my taste. We see snippets of original songs like “New Brain” and “Blood on White Stain” that hint at why Skye is particularly vulnerable to the Smile demon, but I wish we’d understood her star persona a bit more before veering into the jumpscare-laden fake-out moments that have become synonymous with the Smile franchise.
At least Smile 2 follows in its predecessor’s footsteps and delivers an impressively gnarly ending full of killer (pun intended) practical effects. Without spoiling anything, imagine a demonic entity’s powers coming head-to-head with a sold-out stadium tour, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. Skye, please take a page out of Chappell Roan’s book when it comes to fan expectations, I beg!
Wickie Roy (Girls5Eva)
The character of Wickie Roy is queer catnip from the jump. A Jenna Maroney-esque pop diva played by a beloved Broadway star? Say less! Since Girls5Eva follows the members of an early aughts girl group’s attempts to stage a comeback in the present day, all four of its members technically qualify for this lift.
Yet Wickie is the only one who has remained fully committed to star antics for 20-plus years, from faking a tragic backstory to unexpectedly becoming “gaymous” after a clip of her calling out an audience member goes viral. I feel confident that millennial pop gays would ride or die for Wickie Roy on Twitter. Plus, because Girls5Eva spans multiple seasons of television, there’s no shortage of glam-pop-inspired original songs to blast.
Season 3 of Girls5Eva ended with one of Wickie’s solo songs, “Yesternights,” going viral after it was sampled in a fictional episode of Netflix’s The Crown. Will she probably sell out the rest of Girls5Eva in hopes of finally making it big again? Almost definitely. Will I support her rights and wrongs along the way? Also definitely!
Lady Raven (Trap)
There’s a reason why Lady Raven (Saleka) has spawned so many viral tweets since Trap was released earlier this year. She can sing, she can dance, and she can hold her own as a pseudo final girl against the Butcher (Josh Hartnett), all without having to cancel a single concert stop. We stan a triple threat!
Sure, there are some not-so-realistic elements of the Lady Raven concert around which much of Trap’s action is based. Do pop stars actually do matinee shows that feature several intermissions for some reason? No, but the movie is having so much fun that I don’t care!
Unlike, say, Smile 2, Trap fully leans into the trappings of an arena concert, albeit from the point of view of a serial killer desperate to evade being detained by the police. A surprise guest artist unexpectedly appearing? Well, the platform that they used to ascend into the audience makes for a possible escape hatch. Cooper scheming to get his daughter picked for the on-stage fan interaction that Lady Raven stages at each tour stop? Obviously that’s his ticket backstage and away from the detectives who are hot on his tail.
Although the twisty pulpiness of Trap understandably gets more airtime than Lady Raven’s actual music, Saleka — who, yes, happens to be director M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter — wrote 14 songs for the movie, all of which have a catchy R&B bent (I’m partial to “Save Me”).
Pulling off so much of a fake concert inside a real venue — in this case, the FirstOntario Centre — is already impressive, but I never anticipated how central Lady Raven would become in the film’s third act. She successfully uses Instagram Live to galvanize her fans into tracking down the location of one of Cooper’s victims, and reader? I cackled! This is one pop star who would never use Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing.
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