As the nepo baby debate rages on, there is a clear distinction between the celebrities who get it and the people who still think that their famous relatives had nothing to do with their famous upbringing. Then there’s nepo pets, but that’s a whole other thing.
Jack Quaid, The Boys actor and son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, seems to know where his fame came from, and he’s not afraid to admit it. Last year, Ryan spoke highly of her son, and claimed that the nepo discourse invalidates his talent. “That nepo stuff is so dismissive of his work ethic, his gifts and how sensitive he is to the idea of his privilege,” she said. While Quaid appreciated the sentiment, he explained what his mom meant.
“My first thought was like, she’s being a mom. She’s being a loving mom. But I don’t think she’s trying to say that I’m not a nepo baby. I think she’s just trying to say that, in her opinion, it undermines my talent,” Quaid said on The Daily Beast’s Last Laugh podcast. He continued, “I don’t think it undermines my talent. I know that I work hard, and I know I’ve heard ‘no’ way more than I’ve heard ‘yes.’ But I also know that this industry is insanely hard to break into, and I had an easier time doing that than most. Both things can be true,” he stated. “So no, I don’t think she was trying to say that I’m not a privileged person. She knows. She must know. I think she was being a mom.”
Even though Quaid can understand the conversation, not everyone feels that way. Fellow nepo baby Rashida Jones has now spoken on the issue: “I had parents who were in the public eye, but they were extremely protective of us,” Jones told InStyle of her parents, Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton. She said that fame “wasn’t that much part of my reality” and called being famous “pretty poisonous for the most part.”
But once she graduated from Harvard, her dad gave her this advice: “My dad said to me, when I graduated from college: ‘You’re gonna go wait in line with 70,000 other people for a job? That doesn’t seem really that practical.’ And he was right, you know.” Practical? No. Is it how the rest of the world is forced to operate if they don’t have rich parents? Yes!
Either way, Jones ended up on Parks and Rec and Quaid ended up with Starlight, so they both figured it out.