Emma Roberts Says Nepo Baby Discourse Is Sexist: ‘No One Is Calling Out George Clooney’

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read

Emma Roberts is adding more nuance to the nepo baby debate.

The actress, whose father is prolific star Eric Roberts and whose aunt is the iconic Julia Roberts, called out how the nepo-baby label is really only applied to young women.

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As proof, Roberts pointed to her Aunt Julia’s longtime collaborator George Clooney as an older, male example of a nepo baby — despite no one calling Clooney that.

“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 during the “Table for Two” iHeartPodcast. “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.”

The “American Horror Story” star admitted that there are both perks and drawbacks to being born into a famous family.

“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.”

Roberts added that audiences only see the “wins” of nepo babies, “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.”

Maya Hawke and Lily-Rose Depp have both criticized the nepo-baby label.

Depp, who is the daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, told Elle that the term is only applied to actresses.

“I just hear it a lot more about women, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence,” Depp said. “It’s weird to me to reduce somebody to the idea that they’re only there because it’s a generational thing. It just doesn’t make any sense. If somebody’s mom or dad is a doctor, and then the kid becomes a doctor, you’re not going to be like, ‘Well, you’re only a doctor because your parent is a doctor.’ It’s like, ‘No, I went to medical school and trained.'”

She continued, “I know my childhood didn’t look like everybody’s childhood, and it’s a very particular thing to deal with, but it’s also the only thing that I know…The Internet seems to care a lot about that kind of stuff. People are going to have preconceived ideas about you or how you got there, and I can definitely say that nothing is going to get you the part except for being right for the part. The Internet cares a lot more about who your family is than the people who are casting you in things. Maybe you get your foot in the door, but you still just have your foot in the door. There’s a lot of work that comes after that. […]  I feel like for a lot of my career, people have really wanted to define me by the men in my life, whether that’s my family members or my boyfriends, whatever. And I’m really ready to be defined for the things that I put out there.”

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