That one New York Magazine cover is to Hollywood’s nepo babies what Martin Scorsese was to Marvel stars. By that, we mean each sparked an overripe powder keg of discourse, subsequently inspiring almost every affected actor to share their thoughts on the matter. In the past year and change, we’ve heard that nepo baby is an “ugly moniker” from Gwyneth Paltrow, that they “have feelings” from Lily Allen, and that they should be “strong in our belief in our right to exist,” according to Jamie Lee Curtis. On the other side of the aisle are people like Allison Williams, who said, “to not acknowledge that me getting started as an actress versus someone with zero connections isn’t the same—it’s ludicrous” and Maya Hawke, who recently shared that she was “comfortable with not deserving it and doing it anyway.”
Recently, Emma Roberts—the daughter of Runaway Train actor Eric Roberts and niece of Julia Roberts—weighed in on the whole debate, and her comments fall squarely on the Paltrow and Allen side of things. “I always joke, ‘Why is no one calling out George Clooney for being a nepo baby? [His aunt] Rosemary Clooney was an icon,’” Roberts said on a recent episode of the Table for Two podcast (via IndieWire). “I feel like young girls get it harder with the nepo baby thing. Like, I don’t really see people calling out sons of famous actors, not that they should be called out.”
She does have a point. On the infamous New York Magazine cover, only three of the nine actors represented are male (John David Washington, Jack Quaid, and Ben Platt). But while these actors have certainly gotten their share of grief from the media, Roberts isn’t the first to call out the disparity. In a 2022 Elle profile, Lily-Rose Depp also commented, “I just hear it a lot more about women, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence.”
On the podcast, Roberts also acknowledged that there were pros and cons to her privileged status. “Everybody loves the kind of overnight-success story. And so if you’re kind of not the girl from the middle of nowhere that broke into Hollywood, there’s kind of an eye roll of like, ‘Well, your dad was this,’” she said. “There’s two sides of the coin. People like to say, you know, you have a leg up because you have family in the industry. But then the other side to that is, you have to prove yourself more. Also, if people don’t have good experiences with other people in your family, then you’ll never get a chance.”
She suggested that detractors only ever see nepo babies’ “wins… because they only see when you’re on the poster of a movie—they don’t see all the rejection along the way.” “That’s why I’m always very open about things I’ve auditioned for and haven’t gotten the part for,” she concluded.
Roberts’ most recent role was in the latest series of American Horror Story. She currently has multiple projects in production, including Prime Video film Space Cadet, which premieres on the streamer July 4.
