Behind the camera, Martin Scorsese is the one calling the shots—unless it's on TikTok.
There, the Oscar winner's daughter Francesca is the director and he is the star. And recently, the Killers of the Flower Moon director revealed how he became a viral sensation after starring in his 24-year-old's TikToks.
"She would come over to me and say, 'Dad, do this,'" Martin explained on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Jan. 25, of his first TikTok collaboration with Francesca in 2021. "I had a beard and she said, 'Just say this,' and I said, 'Would you leave me alone?'"
However, after a back and forth, he ultimately relented.
"So finally, I said it and it wound up in a TikTok of some kind and it went viral," he continued. "And I remember an Indian filmmaker—a friend of mine—came into New York and wanted to say hello. I walked in the room and said, 'I should tell you I have a beard,' and he goes, ‘Oh no, we all know. It's all over India.'"
And Martin—who is also dad to Cathy Scorsese, 58, and Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, 47—couldn't believe his new look had already made news across the world.
@colbertlateshow Martin Scorsese has been making a splash on social media thanks to his TikTok director, co-star and daughter, @francescascorsese! #Colbert #MartinScorsese #francescascorsese ? original sound - colbertlateshow
"It's the most populated country in the world!" he said. "Anyways, that's how it started."
Since his debut on Francesca's TikTok, he's made occasional appearances participating in trends on the platform. This includes a viral 2021 video where she asked him to identify items like an eyelash curler, menstrual cup and nipple pasties with photos.
And as he revealed, at the time he was hard at work on his latest Oscar-nominated film.
"The hardest one," the 81-year-old noted, "I was trying to do something on Killers of the Flower Moon in the house I was living in and it was right before shooting started. She came up to me and said, 'I'm going to ask you these questions.'"
"I didn't know the answers," he admitted, "so I made my suggestions—I guessed and apparently, it was quite funny."
But the father-daughter duo has continued to slay on social media. In fact, she recently quizzed her dad on current slang terms floating around online—and he even guessed a few terms right, like "spilling the tea" and "ick."
"I was tricked into that," he told The Los Angeles Times in November. "That was a trick. I didn't know those things go viral. They say ‘viral.' I didn't know."
And while Martin—who shares Francesca with wife Helen Morris—has a creative instinct for the silver screen, he's leaving social media to his daughter.
"I don't know anything about that," he added. "But I will say that my daughter has a good eye."