Emma Roberts on Nepo Baby Discourse Double Standards: "Why Is No One Calling Out George Clooney?"
The actress said the discourse tends to come for women more than men.
Emma Roberts has weighed in on the whole nepo baby discourse situation.
In a recent appearance on iHeartPodcasts' Table for Two, Emma explained that being introduced into Hollywood by someone in your family—in her case, her aunt Julia Roberts—is a bit of a double-edged sword.
"I think there's two sides of the coin, you know, people like to say, 'Oh, 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," the Scream Queens actress said.
She continued, "I always joke, I'm like, 'Why is no one calling out George Clooney for being a nepo baby? Rosemary Clooney is an icon!'" (Rosemary, a singer and actress, was George's aunt.)
Emma added, "Young girls, I feel like, 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, I don't think anyone should be called out for wanting to follow their dream."
The actress also stressed that just because she had connections in the industry doesn't mean she didn't experience plenty of rejection along the way, too.
For Emma, there was another advantage to having Julia Roberts for an aunt: She got to understood what she didn't want from an acting career, i.e. mega-fame.
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"I saw very up close what that really looks like with my aunt Julia," she explained. "It's fun and it's great, but there is a part of it that's really scary, and so I've always wanted to kind of carve my own path of not just like straight ahead be a big movie star, but like, do stuff that's creatively fulfilling."
She continued, "I was very conscious of, like, just not wanting to be in it for the fame. When you've seen fame like that up close, and you see what that really does to people and their families, it's scary sometimes."
Right now, Emma, a lifelong book lover, is focused on raising her son Rhodes, 3, and running her online reading community, Belletrist.
Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.