Charli xcx lands a Martin Scorsese cameo in ‘What Happens at Night’

Celebrity & Entertainment journalist
Charli xcx at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival
Charli xcx at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Charli xcx is taking her Martin Scorsese connection from an album cover to the big screen. Variety can exclusively report that the “Brat” singer has filmed a cameo in “What Happens at Night,” the Oscar-winning director’s upcoming Gothic psychological horror starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.

The Apple and StudioCanal production follows an American married couple who travel to a small European town to adopt a baby — only to find that the harder they fight to claim the child, the less they seem to know about themselves.

Details of Charli’s part are being kept under wraps. She joins an ensemble cast that also includes Mads Mikkelsen, Patricia Clarkson and Jared Harris. Representatives for Charli, Apple and StudioCanal did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment.

From the album cover to an on-set cameo

Charli has been drifting toward the movies for a while. Over the past two years she has appeared in seven films, including “The Moment,” a mockumentary directed by her frequent collaborator Aidan Zamiri that cheekily satirized the commercial success she achieved with “Brat.”

Cinema even inspired her latest album, “Music, Fashion, Film,” whose cover pictures John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Scorsese to symbolize each art form. She is currently wrapping up the U.S. leg of the tour, with the final show in Las Vegas on Friday before she heads to Europe in February.

The cameo now completes the loop for a pop star who has been blurring the line between music and movies — seven roles, a mockumentary about her own fame, and an album with Scorsese on its cover. The joke becomes a credit on his next film.

“What Happens at Night” marks Scorsese’s follow-up to 2023’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which also starred DiCaprio and earned 10 Oscar nominations including best picture. The new film does not yet have a release date.

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