English Version | Trending now: nepo babies

In February 2022, an X user (formerly Twitter) posted the following tweet: “Wait I just found out that the actress that plays Lexie [in Euphoria] is a nepotism baby omg her mom is Leslie Mann and her dad is a movie director lol.” As several publications have since pointed out, the outburst, which has gone viral, is curious for several reasons: the "film director" is none other than Judd Apatow, one of the most important names in Hollywood; and the producer of Euphoria, Sam Levinson, is also a nepo baby, an abbreviation that has since been created for nepotism baby, an expression that is too big and boring for today's society, which saves syllables at the speed of light - his father is filmmaker Barry Levinson, responsible, among others, for Good Morning, Vietnam. Meriem Derradji, the Internet user in question, has opened a Pandora's box for a generation thirsty for rumors and fait-divers. Maude Apatow, the actress who plays Lexie - and who, never forget, is the daughter of Leslie Mann and Judd Apatow - has become a kind of "scapegoat" for a debate that has existed since the dawn of time, but which has suddenly become central to the lives of all of us: half of the well-known people we see on television and streaming services are the daughters/granddaughters/nieces/nephews of well-known people. Hardly anyone escapes it, and even Nicholas Braun, the innocent cousin Greg from Succession, is the son of one of the designers who created the Rolling Stones logo. How could nobody has noticed this before? Of course they did. For years and years, the so-called "gossip magazines” have been warning about this issue, usually in a subtle way, with family photos at key moments and little notes like "Oscar winner takes daughter to dance school" or "Golden Globe nominee accompanies son to first casting" - to no avail. If we tried to extinguish nepo babies from our screens, we'd probably run out of movies.

Let's rewind to the beginning of the 20th century, more precisely to December 9, 1909, the day actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was born, son of Douglas Sr. and stepson of Mary Pickford, two actors who, in the 1920s, were the most famous couple on the planet. Taking advantage of his star power, Jesse L. Lasky, co-founder of Paramount, offered him a contract worth a thousand dollars a week... when he was just 13 years old. Like others after him, Fairbanks Jr. never matched his father's legacy, but he had a long career, married Joan Crawford (that's right...) and always seemed aware of his privilege. "Since maturity I have known perfectly well the limits of my abilities," he wrote in his memoirs. Love them or hate them, nepo babies are an integral part of the world we live in. As The Guardian pointed out last December, perhaps the greatest feeling we can have towards them is "resentment." Even without realizing it, we end up railing against their fate, their advantages, their perks. It's offensive how easily they get "everything". And that's what makes us mere mortals indignant. Why should they, who already have "everything", want more? The discussion, as we know, reached boiling point when, also last December, New York magazine dedicated an issue to the subject, indicating that 2022 had been "the year of the nepo baby." Before that, Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of actor Johnny Depp and singer and actress Vanessa Paradis, had given an interview in which she showed little (or no) awareness of the benefits of her golden cradle, provoking an explosion of unparalleled hatred. Unlike the protagonist of The Idol, who became famous when she was still a teenager - by her surname and only by her surname - and who doesn't get the general consensus of the public, other "daughters of..." stars receive unanimous sympathy: this is the case of Mariska Hargitay (Olivia from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), daughter of actress Jayne Mansfield and actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, Lizza Minnelli, whose parents, Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, remain two of the most important names in the seventh art, or Dakota Johnson, daughter of actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, and granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, a film legend. Why is that? Nobody knows. In the same way, hardly anyone wants to know if Michael Douglas, Laura Dern, Anjelica Houston or Tracee Ellis Ross have famous parents.

Nate Jones, the journalist responsible for the article "How A Nepo Baby Is Born", one of several texts published in the special edition of New York mentioned above, suggested a way to understand the complex universe of nepo babies: Better to imagine nepo babies on a spectrum. At the top are the classic nepo babies, inheritors of famous names and famous features: Dakota Johnson, Maya Hawke, Jack Quaid. The next tier down are people who got a leg up from family connections even if they were not famous per se. These include figures like Lena Dunham, whose artist parents supplied the necessary cultural capital, as well as “industry babies” like Billie Eilish, daughter of a voice actress, and Kristen Stewart, whose mother was the script supervisor on The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. The Hadid sisters are a tricky case: As with that other famous Palestinian, Jesus Christ, the benefits of the filial relationship clearly flowed both ways. And we can probably draw a line when it comes to figures like Paris Hilton, for whom the term rich people is already sufficient.” It's not their fault. The nepo babies, that is. It's the fault of those who realize that hiring the son of a famous person brings "an easy marketing hook, as well as millions of followers on TikTok", which guarantees some profit. And some chatter, which, unintentionally, will lead to the same thing: during the pandemic, an article on Deadline about a short film called The Rightway, directed by Steven Spielberg's daughter, starring Sean Penn's son and written by Stephen King's son, sparked days of online controversy. Sometimes their parents are to blame. Take the Operation Varsity Blues scandal in 2019, which revealed the underhand methods by which celebrities like Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman sought to get their children into top universities. Lori's daughter, Olivia Jade, ended up "profiting" from what happened and became a social media star, displaying a refined irony unusual for her age - and privilege. Is she a cool nepo baby?

The fighting shows no signs of stopping. On January 9th, Hailey Bieber was photographed in a Los Angeles parking lot wearing a white T-shirt with the words nepo baby on it. For context: the 26-year-old model is the daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin and the niece of actors Alec, Daniel and William Baldwin, and is currently married to singer Justin Bieber. Bieber's "childish" and "spoiled" attitude was met with a chorus of protests, despite some people claiming it was a harmless prank. Gwyneth Paltrow, actress and founder of the website Goop, couldn't resist commenting on an Instagram page with Bieber's image: "Maybe I need some of these." Paltrow, it should be noted, is the daughter of fellow actress Blythe Danner and director Bruce Paltrow, which puts her on the list of very important ultra-privileged people. None of this was indifferent to Jamie Lee Curtis, the original nepo baby - for all those who ignore the existence of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and who tend to forget Jane Fonda, daughter of the eternal Henry Fonda and sister of Peter Fonda, one of the protagonists of Easy Rider, who in turn is the father of Bridget Fonda, muse of 90s cinema. The protagonist of Halloween, known as "the scream queen", also spoke out on the subject in a post on her social networks: “For the record I have navigated 44 years with the advantages my associated and reflected fame brought me, I don’t pretend there aren’t any, that try to tell me that I have no value on my own”, she wrote. “It’s curious how we immediately make assumptions and snide remarks that someone related to someone else who is famous in their field for their art, would somehow have no talent whatsoever. I have come to learn that is simply not true. The result of a relationship between Tony Curtis (Spartacus, Some Like It Hot) and Janet Leigh (Psycho, Touch of Evil), Jamie Lee Curtis was nominated for an Oscar for the first time at the age of 64. And she won. This is the fate of nepo babies: try, and if you don't succeed the first time, try again. Remember, you're the son of a celebrity.

Perhaps the most striking example of nepo babies are princes and princesses, who naturally follow in their parents' footsteps "just because", or rather, "because nature and God decided so." And after them, the toddlers who shared their golden cradles with other nobles of equal lineage, light years away from the commoners who smiled as they passed by in their sumptuous carriages. The batons of these families, whose bloodline justified inheritances and favors for centuries and centuries, are the same ones that support Kendall Jenner's entrance on the Schiaparelli catwalk or Zoë Kravitz's in The Batman. It's an invisible understanding, never discussed, that puts those closest in the chain in the most coveted positions - similar to what happens, one level down, in the vacancy for the post of tutor. It's not meritocracy at work, it's modernity happening - in a schizophrenic way. However, there are still cases in which the plethora of nepo babies surprises us. In a good way. On the subject of Adam Sandler's new film, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah [in which the main characters are his wife and teenage daughters], the website Screenrant wrote: “In having his own company [Happy Madison Productions], Adam has long been able to cast his family members, similarly to how Judd Apatow has made multiple films casting his wife, Leslie Mann, and their daughters, Maude and Iris. While this might seem like a classic case of unjust nepotism casting, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah is more of a Sandler family passion project.” And it's proof that no one - no one - can broach the subject of "nepo babies" without mentioning a film director called Judd Apatow.

*Originally translated from The Fame Issue, published October 2023. Full credits and stories in the print issue.