Lately, when “The Bold and the Beautiful” actress Maile Masako Brady scrolls through TikTok, she sees the hashtag #nepobaby, which can lead her to countless videos, many of which pose similar questions: Did you know that “Stranger Things” star Maya Hawke’s dad is Ethan Hawke and her mom is Uma Thurman? Or that Jack Quaid is related to that Quaid? Or that Beanie Feldstein’s family connections may have helped get her ultimately doomed role in “Funny Girl”?
Brady, 19, finds these TikToks pretty entertaining — even though, technically, “nepo baby” also describes her. She knows the phrase certainly sounds insulting. However…
“It’s not like it’s wrong?” said Brady, the daughter of actor and comedian Wayne Brady. “I’m an actress, I’m a singer. I basically do what my dad does, in a way. I’m very fortunate to have grown up around the arts and being given certain advantages. So I’m not going to be like, ‘Don’t make fun of me for the truth, that’s mean!’ It doesn’t make me feel bad — it’s just funny to me.”
Nepotism and Hollywood have been synonymous since the dawn of time, or at least since the 1870s when aspiring actor Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blythe changed his name to Maurice Barrymore and left England, sailed to America, married actress Georgiana Drew and they produced an acting lineage that continues today with our nation’s most chaotic talk-show host, great-granddaughter Drew Barrymore.
But recently on social media, such celebrities have been sardonically dubbed “nepotism babies.” The phrase saw a massive spike on Google earlier this year — right around the time a tweet went viral from a young viewer of HBO’s “Euphoria” who was apparently shocked to learn one of show’s stars, Maude Apatow, was the daughter of actress Leslie Mann and “a movie director.”
Much like when HBO’s “Girls” debuted a decade ago — incidentally, produced by aforementioned “movie director” Judd Apatow — and millennials had a field day realizing all four lead actresses had well-known parents, a new online generation has discovered Hollywood nepotism. The hashtag #nepobaby, with more than 30 million views on TikTok, includes videos that “expose” models whose moms were models (Anwar Hadid, Kaia Gerber, Lila Moss) or list their “fave” nepotism beneficiaries (Zoë Kravitz, Dan Levy, Dakota Johnson). Some use the app to process their feelings on the matter. (“Tracee Ellis Ross being Diana Ross’s daughter. Why did that shake me to my core?”) Others question why it’s suddenly become such a volatile subject, since children follow their parents into plenty of other industries, such as politics and journalism.
“The nepotism baby community on TikTok is more than just a digital fad, but instead part of a wider trend of social justice,” theorized one video posted by British magazine the Face, explaining nepo babies can fall into “good” and “bad” categories depending how honest they are about their path to fame, if they do charity work or simply seem humble. “Young people who have had enough of an unlevel playing field are writing their own rules and applying justice to a system that was created without them.”
Kit Keenan, a podcaster and content creator whose mother is fashion designer Cynthia Rowley, said she has thought a lot about her privileged upbringing in New York City as she’s built her career. By the time she got to college, she had her own clothing line and a large enough social media platform to catch the attention of “The Bachelor” producers, who recruited her as a contestant for the 2021 season. After millions of viewers saw her on the popular show, she continued to build her Instagram and TikTok followings, incorporating food and recipe content, and now hosts a podcast with Rowley called “Ageless.”.
I know what I have been given in life, and I’m trying to use those opportunities to help other people and just recognize that,” said Keenan, 23. One thing she’s certain about is it’s important to be transparent about your background.
“It doesn’t mean that you finish the race already in first place, but you started with a huge head start,” she added. “I think the worst thing a nepo baby can do is say that they earned everything they had all on their own.”
Nepo babies are fully aware that their mere existence — being born into wealth and opportunities, especially in an era of economic and social distress — can spark an intense, and often negative, reaction. They’ve seen the memes. (Like the one about how you should never ask an indie musician why the names of their parents have a blue link on Wikipedia.) Snarky tabloid items populate gossip sites daily. (Who can forget the one about the rumored team of people tasked with helping Brooklyn Beckham — son of David and Victoria Beckham — learn to cook after he landed a cooking show.
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