Francesca Scorsese on the One Thing She Wouldn’t Do While Directing ‘Saints’ Episode, Her Father’s Bible Bedtime Stories and Drifting Away From the Church
There was one thing Francesca Scorsese wasn’t comfortable doing when she directed an episode for her father’s Fox Nation series “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” about Saint Carlo Acutis.
Acutis, an Italian teen known for being a devout Catholic and promoting the religion on the internet, was only 15 when he died of leukemia in 2006. Known as the first millennial saint, he was canonized in 2015.
Francesca was given the option of filming the body of Acutis, which is entombed and on display in a glass coffin in Assisi, Italy. “It was slightly disturbing because it’s a young boy. They put this silicone mask over him, and he looks perfectly preserved,” she tells me. “It looks like a young boy sleeping, like one of my friends, and he’s in a tracksuit and sneakers. … There was a bit of a point of contention on whether or not we were going to film his body. After I left his body, I was like, ‘No, we can’t. It just feels so wrong.’ So we used a very slight amount of stock footage for that as not to disrupt the peace in there.”
Courtesy of Fox Nation
Francesca’s childhood was a religious one. “I had my communion, I had my confirmation. I would go to the classes to get through all that,” she remembers. “I’d go to church. I’d pray every night. My dad would read me the Bible like a bedtime story sometimes.”
But Francesca’s faith began to wane in her teenage years, especially as she witnessed her mother Helen’s battle with Parkinson’s disease. “I often found myself asking, ‘Why does God do bad things to good people, or let bad things happen to good people?’” she says. “My mom was a big point of struggle for me as I got older and that got a lot worse. As it started to become a very prevalent thing in my life, I think that’s a big part of why I sort of drifted away from my beliefs.”
Francesca’s directing credits include three shorts. She’s also an actress, best known for her work in Luca Guadagnino’s HBO series “We Are Who We Are,” and has served as a creative director on various commercial projects. About two years ago, she and her father became viral hits for their joint videos Francesca posted on TikTok.
While filming “Saints” episode — it premieres Sunday, Dec. 7 on Fox Nation — she would send dailies to her father, who serves as the series narrator as well as an executive producer. “I would get a call or a text, and he’d be like, ‘These rushes look great,’” Francesca recalls. “I was never really given any notes until I was in post-production. I mean, everything he said was completely valid.”
Francesca acknowledges that she’s a so-called “nepo-baby”: “I got this obviously because my dad was overseeing everything as the executive producer. I’m not going to deny anything. I’m honored to be given an opportunity like this, and I’m going to do my best.”
Francesca admits she had “some hesitation” working on a Fox Nation project because of the politics associated with Fox. “But I know how my dad feels with everything,” she says. “I feel pretty much the same way as he does in terms of politics and everything, and I look up to him, and I really follow in his footsteps a lot of the time. But Fox was the only one that supported this project and that wanted to bring this project to life. I think there’s something to say about that.”
Next up, Francesca will direct “Adults,” a dark comedy short about her mom’s childhood. “My mom grew up in Paris, and her dad was at the American embassy there,” she said. “It’s a father-daughter story.”
The Scorseses will spend Christmas Eve at home with family. “We’ll have dinner and open gifts,” Francesca says. New Year’s Eve will be spent at Martin Scorsese’s office: “We’ll watch a movie and then watch the fireworks on TV. We have some champagne, maybe cater some Nobu.”
