It’s not what you know, it’s who you know

The endless, so called ‘debate’, around the presence of nepotism babies in the celebrity world is always underpinned by the refusal of privileged people to acknowledge their privilege. For anyone who doesn’t know, a nepotism baby is the child of a famous star who has become famous themselves. That’s to say, their parents have pulled some strings, or their children have been chosen for roles not based on their talent, but based on their parent’s talent. Now, this may be a rather harsh, pessimistic view; there are many celebrities with famous parents who are extremely talented (after all, talent breeds talent). The likes of Miley Cyrus and Timothée Chalamet prove this.

The debate is perhaps not whether these people are talented, have had to face rejection or hardships but instead whether they deserve their opportunities and understand their privilege. This is what is so infuriating about this debate in the media: these mega-advantaged people try to deny their advantages in life because they think people are trying to question their talent. It is a defence mechanism that is fuelled by complete ignorance to the hardships that others go through to achieve the same things in life. 

Talking of stars disconnected from any reality, it would be absurd to start with anyone other than Lily Rose Depp, who in a recent article with Elle claimed “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.” You’ve massively missed the mark there Lily … the exams that people need to pass to get into medical schools are anonymous … and if you aren’t clever enough to get through medical training your doctor parents can’t just hand you the qualification off a silver platter. A pretty ignorant remark from Miss Depp. It’s not to say that Depp isn’t a talented model, but her height comes in at 5’5”, while the minimum height requirement for an application for a modelling agency is 5’9”. If we’re going to use the medical school analogy, doesn’t that equate to getting AAB at A-level when you need A*A*A?

Another famous model, Vittoria Ceretti spoke out about her issues with these ignorant remarks: “at the end of the day you can still always go cry on your dad's couch in your villa in Malibu, but how about not being able to pay for your flight back home to your family? Waiting hours to do a fitting/casting just to see a nepo baby walk past you from the warm seat of her/his Mercedes with her/his driver […] You have no fucking idea how much it takes to make people respect you. TAKES YEARS. You just get it [for] free day one.” Ceretti’s view really emphasises that this debate is not about undermining these people’s talents, but acknowledging that their journey to get there was so much easier. By denying your privilege, you are completely disrespecting anyone who has had to make sacrifices for the job. It’s a kick in the teeth. No one is trying to say you aren’t talented Lily, but we just want you to admit the advantaged place you came from. 

To end on a more positive note, Pierce Brosnan’s kids have taken the right approach. Paris said to E! News that “I think we need to just be grateful for our blessings. It's always gonna be there and we got to recognize it. At the end of the day, we're just grateful to be here. [My brother]'s an amazing musician and I'm painting right now, so we're figuring it out.” This is the self-aware attitude that we are looking for in the nepotism baby debate. Thanks Paris.