17-year-old Romy Mars began her summer vacation by dropping her first official songs — the vibey singles “Stuck Up” and “From a Distance,” created with producer Claud — and she’s ending it with a pair of screen roles in FX’s buzzy new comedy series English Teacher and Francis Ford Coppola’s controversial Megalopolis. Not bad for an incoming Manhattan high school senior.
It would be easy to say that such is the life of a nepo baby; Romy is the daughter of filmmaker Sofia Coppola and Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars. We’re all influenced by our parents, however, and the distinctive influences in Romy’s childhood have almost genetically shaped the kinds of music she’s started making — imagistic lyrics about teenage life and heartbreak, set to synth pop, with plenty of vocoder and reverb.
“My mom always told me she felt sometimes teenagers were disrespected in film, and kind of just thought of as stupid kids,” Romy tells Teen Vogue. “She wanted to show that teenagers’ stories matter. That was always really cool for me. By her showing teenagers’ lives, I did feel like my stories were also important.”
Prior to these music and acting endeavors, she was best known for a viral 2023 TikTok in which she storytimed about how she was grounded for attempting to charter a helicopter to see a camp friend while simultaneously trying to figure out the difference between onions and garlic for vodka sauce. Instead of rolling their eyes, a lot of the internet simply seemed a bit endeared — here was a teenager with all the access and high-brow art cred in the world, the descendant of a family of artists and Oscar winners going back multiple generations, who actually seemed pretty normal (minus the helicopter). The TikTok is silly and lighthearted, and Romy easily pokes fun at the strangeness of her life.
For what it’s worth, it’s Romy that brings up the word first in our conversation, sitting in the Brooklyn music studio she and Claud have rented from producer and Bleachers member Mikey Freedom Hart.
“I think about nepotism a lot, like more than I should,” she says. “It's true there's so many talented people, more talented than me. I get the opportunity to record in a studio and have access to scripts and stuff because of my family. I can't forget that. I always try to think about how lucky I am to get the opportunities that I get, and not just [be] like, ‘Well, this is my life.’”
Romy and Claud met through Jack Antonoff, who mentioned to Claud that Romy was looking for a music producer. Sofia Coppola sent Claud a few of Romy’s songwriting voice memos and a song she made with her father; Claud was hooked. “I just loved Romy’s songwriting,” they reflect. The pair bonded over music they like, including Amy Winehouse (Romy has a sticker of the musician on her laptop) and Olivia Rodrigo. “That was like years ago.” Romy chimes in, “I was a freshman!” They reminisce for a moment. “I was so scared when I first came in here with my guitar like ‘Okay! Here I go!’” she says. Claud laughs, gesturing to the back wall, where at least a half a dozen guitars are mounted on the wall. Romy shrugs, “I didn’t know how many options there were.”
She was 14 then, and more self-conscious, unsure. “Singing in a studio mic in front of people you barely know is such a new thing. Now you’re like a pro,” Claud notes. Romy demures, “I would not say that.” Claud turns to me, “I would. You can write that down.”
There’s some of that quietness and hesitance in Romy at 17, too, standing at the mic and double-tracking vocals on a new song to make them stronger, more full, Claud explains. You have to match each syllable exactly in the duplicate to layer them. The lyric goes, “It sucks bein’ a runner-up.” Romy isn’t sure she’s getting it. “Am I on time? Am I matching each word actually?” she asks Claud. Claud reassures her, but they also notice some background noise. The AC is switched off. The BQE is visible through the windows a dozen floors up, but you can’t hear the New York City traffic. “Is it construction?” someone asks. Ah, Claud realizes, it’s the pottery studio upstairs, the wheel clattering as they work. Claud cracks, “It could be worse. It could be woodworking.”
The vibe between them feels friendly but also chill. Claud, 25, seems very aware that Romy is a literal teenager and still very much learning the ropes. But they’re also aware that she wants to learn and grow and receive feedback. In the studio, you can see her developing her instincts in real time. She doesn’t yet know exactly what’s not working, but she can hear when something’s off. She apologizes for needing a few extra tries, but Claud waves her off. “It takes me 30 million tries to get the double,” they say.
That learning curve is part of why Romy wanted to start recording music so young in the first place.
“[I wanted] somewhere to build off of,” she says. “You don't have so many streams overnight. I wanted to start super soon so that I could keep going. But the reality is, it takes a long time to get a song ready.” She was a bit anxious about the reaction to the music. “I was really nervous that people were going to, because of my parents, be like, ‘Oh, she's a nepotism kid making music.’ But people were really nice and that made me feel really encouraged.”
It helps that the songs are great. As Vogue’s Emma Specter wrote, “Just imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that the songs were both… certified bops?” Romy set out to show some range; “Stuck Up” is an upbeat poolside daytime haze of an old relationship, while “From a Distance” is bluer and darker, with a kicky little beat, meant to sound like a late night drive. “I feel like that’s what I always say when we’re making stuff, ‘Can we make it darker?’” Romy laughs.
Soon, Romy will begin her senior year of high school, though she’s most looking forward to senior spring, when college applications are done and there’s very little homework anymore. “I really am not a woman of academics,” Romy says. “I have a hard time paying attention and stuff, so going back to school is never exciting for me.” But she’s glad to be back with her friends, who she hasn’t seen all summer.
I ask if her private school is anything like Gossip Girl, picturing designer uniforms and ultra-manipulative popular girls and decadent parties. “Depends what kind of girl you are,” she says. “But there's some girls that are super into being like…”
Like a queen bee type?
“Yes, yes.”
But that’s not you?
“Well, no because, I have my friends. I'm sure if I wasn't so close with those two girls that maybe I'd be like, ‘I need to be super popular.’ But I feel secure, so I feel like I don't need it.”
She concludes, “There's girls at my school that are like Gossip Girl, totally. They come to school with their Goyards, and they flip their hair.” Romy doesn’t have a first day of school outfit picked out, but she suggests she’ll probably go with “shorts, a simple top, and cowboy boots.”
Simultaneously, she’ll appear in episode 3 of English Teacher, titled “Kayla Syndrome.” In the episode, Romy Mars plays Kayla, one-half of a best friend duo with Chelsea (Ivy Wolk), who makes up a disease — asymptomatic tourette’s — much to the increasing frustration of teacher Evan Marquez (Brian Jordan Alvarez, also the show’s creator). The disease is a bid for attention, but it’s also a side plot in a classic teenage girl power struggle. Romy plays the character with a light touch, coming across as effortlessly funny.
“I tried to just be the most nonchalant annoying teenager I could be,” Romy tells Teen Vogue. “Brian Jordan Alvarez is really smart and nice, and will hand it over to us a lot of the time. So if I have an idea for a line that's not in the script, I'll just be like, ‘Oh, can I say this? I promise I'll try to make it funny.’ And he's like, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ So some of it is improv.”
She says she loves acting, and that it would be fun to pursue comedy roles specifically. But the future is up in the air for Romy, who isn’t totally certain she’ll go to college but also isn’t totally sold on pop stardom. She imagines a future album of mini stories and fragments of her life and fictional inspirations, but only when she’s sure she’s got the best songs possible. In the meantime, she’ll keep writing and hopefully releasing more new music sooner rather than later. Also in the meantime, her college counselor is helping her form a list of schools — just in case.
“It would be ideal if I had some job that I could just [do] and not go to college,” she says, “but realistically I'm sure yeah, I'll go.”
