Photography by Getty Images
The director’s daughter Romy Croquet Mars has made her TikTok debut, and it’s nothing less than high art.
Date March 22, 2023
Just when the world was tiring of the nepo baby conversation, an unlikely hero emerged. Romy Croquet Mars is the daughter of Oscar-winning director Sofia Coppola and Grammy-winning singer Thomas Mars. Her grandfather is director Francis Ford Coppola (of The Godfather trilogy). Her cousin is Nicolas Cage. She’s essentially the nepo baby to end all nepo babies — but her artistic talent speaks for itself. And by that, I am of course referring to a now-viral 49-second clip of her attempting to make dinner.
As many questionable decisions do, it all started with a TikTok — nay, a short film. From the gate, it is delightfully unhinged. “Make a vodka sauce pasta with me because I’m grounded,” she says at full tilt. Why the stay-at-home punishment? She goes on to casually explain that it’s because she tried to charter a helicopter on her dad’s credit card to go have dinner with a friend from camp (as one does). “Okay, let’s get started.”
Maybe it’s the fact that the video shows all her movements at 2x speed. Perhaps it’s her confession that she doesn’t know the difference between garlic and onion — before preceding to cut a shallot. It’s hard to place, but there’s something utterly cinematic about the whole thing.
Our narrator goes on to explain why she’s making the video, with no decipherable punctuation in earshot. “I thought I would do this since I’m already grounded because my parents’ biggest rule is that I’m not allowed to have any public social media accounts, because they don’t want me to be a nepotism kid,” she says. “But TikTok is not gonna make me famous so it doesn’t really matter.” (Famous last words.)
There are other cameo appearances, too, like her father’s Grammy Award, her dog, and most importantly, her babysitter’s boyfriend, Ari. “My parents are never home so these are my replacement parents,” she says. Next, babysitter boyfriend Ari goes on to change filmmaking — and the English language — forever, by proposing that the term “fiasco” be rephrased to “fiascA,” because, in his words, “It’s women’s history month.” Gender equality, at long last.
Unlike other nepo-baby-self-referential content, this post has been overwhelmingly celebrated. Why? She’s not trying to be relatable. She’s not hiding her parents’ Hollywood success (see below). Her candid spiel doesn’t come off as unlikeable, or even mildly annoying. In fact, in the grand scheme of wildly privileged teens, wanting to visit her friends at camp seems like a totally reasonable request, actually.
If anything, it’s poetry. Think about it: Sofia Coppola’s signature subject matter (Bling Ring; Virgin Suicides; Marie Antoinette) focuses on the distant melancholy of white, thin, affluent teenage girls. Now, her daughter has debuted on the world stage with an undoubtedly similar oeuvre of ennui. Life really does imitate art!
Is it irony? We may never know. And it doesn’t really matter, because regardless, it’s pure entertainment. It has drama. It has intrigue. It has vegetable-related befuddlement! The video has since been deleted, but there’s an element of expectation still lingering in the air. As Romy Croquet Mars said herself at the end, “I will see you in part two, where I actually make the pasta.” Talk about a cliffhanger.
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