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4 hours ago
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A couple of years ago I wrote about the nepo baby discourse that had kicked off, arguing that focusing all of our energy on the very rich and famous was a distraction, when we should be talking about class and opportunities among the rest of us ugly losers. I still stand by this position. However, I am now being forced to expend a bit of the energy I have saved up. After years of discussion around this, my patience is wearing thin. No matter how measured and logical I attempt to be about the issue, it turns out I am still vulnerable to getting really pissed off by it.
Last week, Patrick Schwarzenegger turned out to be the straw (nepo baby) that broke the camel’s (my) back (made me so mad I’m writing this). Schwarzenegger is an actor who is currently starring in the new season of The White Lotus, one of the most coveted jobs in TV. He plays the arrogant and awful son of a very wealthy man, and he’s good! If you don’t know Patrick’s work, you might know his father, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or his mother, Maria Shriver, due to the fact they are extremely famous and powerful, both politically and in Hollywood.
In an interview last week, Schwarzenegger (the smaller) said:
I know there are people who’ll say I only got this role because of who my dad is. They’re not seeing that I’ve had 10 years of acting classes, put on school plays every week, worked on my characters for hours on end or the hundreds of rejected auditions I’ve been on. Of course, it’s frustrating and you can get boxed in and you think at that moment, I wish I didn’t have my last name. But that’s a small moment.
Aw, I’m playing the world’s muscliest violin. This is the crux of the thing that I can’t stand. Nobody is saying this genetically gifted man can’t act, or that he doesn’t work hard, or that he didn’t earn his way on to The White Lotus. He has been largely praised. This has only become a problem because he has the common Achilles heel of a privileged life – being defensive about it. It’s annoying. It’s being unable to look at your life and the surname you have, and recognise all the opportunities that your privilege afforded you, and the ways your career has been easier, even if you have worked hard. It’s not thinking about the ways you have been able to get better, because you had the time and support and wealth to spend on it.
Actors from different backgrounds don’t get to study theatre full-time while also doing acting lessons with Nancy Banks, one of the best (and I assume most expensive) in the country. They don’t get to walk on to Hollywood sets as a child and meet everyone in the industry.
But this isn’t even about connections; it’s about the fact that living life as a normal person means dedicating a huge amount of your available energy to surviving, especially as an aspiring creative in this time of dying industries. Many very talented people have to give up, many chase their dreams forever without ever catching them, while a select few get to dedicate every bit of their energy to acting, because the issue of survival just isn’t on their radar. And that is perfectly fine and good; they should do what they want. Except complain about it to the rest of us, publicly.
When Lily-Rose Depp (among others) says something like:
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.
OK! Everyone else works hard as well, they just don’t get their foot in the door automatically from birth – the hardest part. For the rest of us that door is hidden behind a series of similar looking doors in the world’s biggest door factory. Not recognising or conceding the truth of that? I can’t handle it. Not only are these some of the blessed in life who got this incredible leg up into the thing they love to do, not only were all the draining hard parts of life taken off their shoulders – they are defensive about it. They still can’t just admit they got help, they had advantages, and used them well. That’s literally all we want.
In recent years, a few nepo babies have decided to be direct and honest, and it’s absurdly refreshing. Jack Quaid, one of the most nepo baby babies in existence, son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, said:
People have called me a ‘nepo baby.’ I’m inclined to agree. I am an immensely privileged person, was able to get representation pretty early on, and that’s more than half the battle.
Allison Williams, star of Girls and M3gan, whose dad (journalist and news anchor Brian Williams) isn’t even the same field as her, said:
To not acknowledge that me getting started as an actress versus someone with zero connections isn’t the same – it’s ludicrous. It doesn’t take anything away from the work that I’ve done. It just means that it’s not as fun to root for me.
That’s it! That is literally all it takes for us to move on and feel warmly about you forever. Having a semblance, or even some tiny crumb, of self-awareness.
I understand it must be a bit annoying for Patrick Schwarzenegger to have a few people say he got into acting because of his dad. I’m sure if you are someone who works very hard and takes acting classes and has rejections and a few people still say your dad got you the work, that may feel dismissive. But on the other hand … who cares? You have been given every single advantage in life and you are succeeding in what you want to do, and your ego is so fragile that you can’t even acknowledge the clear help you have had? It comes across as clueless and thin-skinned, insecure, selfish – and it’s deeply annoying.
If the worst thing about your blessed situation is that you have to convince people you’re good at acting in your own right, you should stop complaining and do that. You’ve had enough lessons.
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Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney
