Take yourself back, if you will, to the innocent year of 2023—March 2023, specifically. Brendan Frasier had won the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Whale, a film we all saw. What a time!
Of course, the biggest event of that time in all our lives was Lost In Translation director Sophia Coppola’s daughter Romy Mars’ viral TikTok of her making a vodka sauce pasta.
However, the exquisite construction of a crowd-pleasing Italian dish aside, the real meat of the viral-ness was the circumstances around the sauce.
Yes, Romy was grounded for attempting to “charter a helicopter from New York to Maryland on my dad’s credit card because I wanted to have dinner with my camp friend.” (WHO among us…?)
The TikTok, while quickly deleted from its parent service, was swiftly posted to Twitter, where it was viewed over 11 million times over the course of that week.
Aside from that monumental TikTok, Romy keeps a relatively low profile, especially for a Hollywood child. “I don’t want them to ever feel jaded and I’ve never seen the value of taking kids to premieres or things like that,” mother Sophia told The Guardian in 2017.
…That is, until very recently. Earlier this month, the 17-year-old Romy emerged at Cannes to support grandpappy Frank Coppola’s new film, Megalopolis.
Or was that the reason? Because in a twist worthy of a Nicholas Cage film (Romy’s…2nd cousin once removed?), Romy just dropped her first pop single, “Stuck Up.” Take a listen:
Produced by bedroom pop artist Claud, known for their collaborations with Clairo, “Stuck Up” and “From a Distance” showcase Mars speak-singing confessional lyrics over stripped-down instrumentals.
“Stuck Up’s” lilting and catchy chorus is reminiscent of Clairo’s earlier work, while the explicit “From a Distance” channels the attitude of Olivia Rodrigo with Mars singing, “Always going to be somebody else you’re fucking seeing/Always going to be stuck in these lies I keep believing.”
“From a Distance” is also produced by Claud. Both tunes feature speak-singing confessional lyrics over sparse instrumentation. Worth noting: Romy's father is Thomas Mars of the band Phoenix.
So was Romy just at Cannes to soften the ground for her burst onto the pop music scene and into the public eye? You be the judge.
The move may appear to have come out of nowhere, but @wengel spotted some undeniable foreshadowing in Romy’s sauce 'Tok. Sure enough:
Do you not see? The sauce connects the whole thing, people:
Of course, the internet has something to say about the whole ordeal:
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