Nepo Baby of the Week: Even Sofia Coppola Thinks ‘Twilight’ Got Too Weird

Welcome back to Nepo Baby of the Week! Right after Gwyneth Paltrow issued yet another controversial take on “nepo baby culture,” a different Hollywood princess is arguing that having rich, famous parents isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

In a new Rolling Stone profile, Sofia Coppola said she had to work “really, really hard to be taken seriously” to succeed in Hollywood, despite having an Oscar-winning father, Francis Ford Coppola, and other famous relatives. (Unfortunately, there was no mention of her hilarious daughter, one-time TikTok star Romy Mars, in this nepo-baby discussion.)

On any other day, maybe during a less eventful week, this quote probably would’ve been disputed by all of Twitter and maybe in this column—although her point about being “taken seriously” isn’t totally unfounded. The real question is whether this matters when they are less privileged filmmakers whose work isn’t considered at all. But thankfully, Coppola had more interesting things to talk about during this interview, including one anecdote about her brief involvement with the Twilight franchise that has boggled my brain.

Why ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 2’ Jumps the Shark

Unbeknownst to me, a recovering Twihard and a Coppola Comrade, the Lost In Translation director was approached to direct the absolutely abhorrent fourth film in the Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn — Part I. In the Rolling Stone interview, Coppola was very blunt about her apprehensions regarding the story. Specifically, she didn’t feel good about a plotline where werewolf Jacob Black essentially calls dibs on Edward and Bella Cullen’s newborn daughter.

“We had one meeting, and it never went anywhere,” Coppola told the publication. “I thought the whole imprinting-werewolf thing was weird. The baby. Too weird! But part of the earlier Twilight could be done in an interesting way. I thought it’d be fun to do a teen-vampire romance, but the last one gets really far out.”

First of all, what a read on Stephanie Meyer. Plenty of Twihards have given the Twilight author a side-eye in subsequent years for the very sexist, racist and Mormon content in her books. (I will never forgive Meyer for making my favorite member of the Cullen family, Jasper, a former Confederate soldier with no further explanation on his politics!) But getting called a weirdo by Coppola would actually put me in my grave.

Coppola’s also totally right. I specifically remember being at a midnight screening for Breaking Dawn — Part I and hearing the collective groans from the audience when Jacob realizes that he has a special connection with Renesmee. He also discovers that she’s his soulmate right before he plans to murder her for almost killing Bella, who he originally thought was the love of his life, during childbirth. (His sense of possession over these two is so problematic, to say the least.) In Part II, Jacob and Renesmee are literally just hanging out the whole time while Bella and Edward allow their child to be groomed.

This anecdote feels relevant to Coppola’s latest film Priscilla, which is literally all about grooming. In the case of the titular character’s relationship to Elvis Presley, she’s able to demonstrate some agency by the end and flee their toxic marriage. In Twilight, however, Renesmee has zero say in whether she wants to spend the rest of her life with this older, controlling man, and their “love story” is framed in an idyllic, fairy-tale light.

I’m obviously happy that Coppola does not have this movie on her wrap sheet. But I still think she would make a great movie about a curious, 18-year-old Nessie living under the thumb of an older, hot-tempered werewolf. I’m also just interested in what her take on Twilight would look like. Thanks to AI, the internet has already made some guesses.

I’m mostly delighted that Coppola has any appreciation for the Twilight series at all—even though she was apparently working on a vampire story before the franchise blew up. She also displays more interest in Twilight in this Rolling Stone piece than in Barbie, which is… fascinating. Mainly, this factoid affirms my belief that the franchise, whose first entry was helmed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), began as arthouse cinema before it became overrun by terrible action sequences and bad CGI. I’m glad one of our greatest Gen-X filmmakers could recognize it.

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