When “Godfather Part III” came out, the film was criticized as a letdown after the success of the previous film, but most of the more hateful comments were directed directly at Sofia Coppola, and her now-infamously panned performance in the film. Now, Sofia and Francis Ford Coppola opened up about the backlash and how Sofia was sort of thrown under the bus for the film.
In a new interview with The New York Times, Sofia Coppola opened up about her panned performance. “It was embarrassing to be thrown out to the public in that kind of way,” Coppola said. “But it wasn’t my dream to be an actress, so I wasn’t crushed. I had other interests. It didn’t destroy me.”
“They wanted to attack the picture when, for some, it didn’t live up to its promise,” Ford Coppola added, referring to what he saw as efforts to make Sofia a scapegoat for the shortcomings of the film. “And they came after this 18-year-old girl, who had only done it for me. The daughter took the bullet for Michael Corleone — my daughter took the bullet for me.”
It seems like the criticism didn’t discourage Sofia Coppola from her filmmaking career. “It taught me that as a creative person, you have to put your work out there,” she said. “It toughens you up. I know it’s a cliché, but it can make you stronger.”
Indeed, a few days before the interview, Coppola’s daughter told her she read an article that listed the death of Mary Corleone as “the worst death scene ever in the history of movies,” but the filmmaker sees the humor in that. “I was like, oh my God, all these years later, it’s still a thing,” Sofia said. “I think it’s so funny that it lingers, all these years later. It’s fine.”
Here is a reminder of how brutal the criticism was at the time.