Cailee Spaeny doesn’t want to talk about “the lineage”. Since 1999, a handful of young, female actors have been turned into stars by the filmmaker Sofia Coppola – she of cinema’s pink hues, aimless heroes and fractured girlhoods. Kirsten Dunst graduated from kiddie movies with The Virgin Suicides. Scarlett Johansson became Scarlett Johansson with Lost in Translation. Elle Fanning unlocked new depths to her work with Somewhere. But ask Spaeny if she’s thought about what it means to be a Coppola muse and she shudders.
“Honestly, I just needed to make sure the film turned out OK,” the 25-year-old laughs. A month before we meet, Spaeny could be found sitting anxiously at the Venice Film Festival and about to see her starring role in Coppola’s Priscilla for the first time. She busied herself by comparing nerves with Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi. In the film, the pair play Priscilla and Elvis Presley, two halves of a famed, dysfunctional and – if we’re being frank – uniquely bananas marriage. “We kept saying to each other, ‘What if we’re in the first bad Sofia Coppola movie? What if we’ve ruined her?’” And now that she’s seen it? She hesitates. “I mean, I think we can relax a little now.”
