Emma Roberts is Julia Roberts’ niece and Eric Roberts’ daughter. Emma has been working since she was a kid, and Julia absolutely “nepotized” her niece’s way into the industry, appearing in Aunt Julia’s films and benefiting from Aunt Julia’s industry connections. Emma is Peak Nepo Baby, and she was all about nepotism since childhood. Well, Emma has decided to chime in on the whole “nepo baby” discourse. Would you believe that Emma thinks nepo babies have to work harder to prove themselves more??
Emma Roberts appeared on the “Table for Two” podcast (via Vanity Fair) and was asked whether becoming a “massive movie star” was a priority for her when she decided to follow in the career footsteps of her father, Eric Roberts, and her aunt, Julia Roberts. Not quite. Emma said that watching her aunt become an A-list superstar as a kid showed her how scary that level of fame can be.
“I saw very up close what that really looks like,” Roberts said. “It’s obviously fun and it’s great, but there is a part of it that’s really scary. So I’ve wanted to kind of carve my own path. … Fame has never been the goal, because fame at a certain level is kind of scary.”
“Even in my later teens, I was like, I never want my fame to outweigh my work,” she continued. “Because there’s nothing scarier to me than being so famous that you’re never left alone, but also you’re not getting good jobs. And that was kind of happening to a lot of people when I was in my teens and early 20s. I never wanted that to happen to me.”
“There’s two sides of the coin,” Roberts said [about the ‘nepo baby’ discourse]. “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.”
“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 continued. “I always joke, ‘Why is no one calling out George Clooney for being a nepo baby? [His aunt] Rosemary Clooney was an icon.’ 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.”
Roberts concluded her argument by saying that people who criticize nepo babys “only see your 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.”
The one thing I think is correct is that female nepo babies get it harder than the guys. Other nepo babies have mentioned that too, so it must have been in some kind of nepo-baby memo or they were issued talking points or something. But the whole “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” construct is idiotic. That’s not the way Hollywood works anymore. While there are still those overnight success stories, they are few and far between because Hollywood has gone all-in on nepo babies. I remember years ago, Karen Elson talking about how much the fashion industry has changed because there was such an obsession with “this girl is the daughter of –.” That’s happened in Hollywood too, and it’s one of the reasons why I support someone like Sydney Sweeney, because she had zero connections and she hustled her ass off to make her career happen.
“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.” The bad experiences with family members could be a reference to her father Eric Roberts, who has kind of a reputation for being an a–hole professionally and privately. Eric was estranged from Julia and some of the family for a while as well. But no, nepo babies don’t have to “prove themselves more.” That’s completely asinine coming out of Emma’s mouth.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Kyle Rover/startraksphoto.com.