Jamie Lee Curtis Releases Full Statement on 'Nepo Baby' Debate

The nepo baby conversation has been brewing under the surface of pop culture for decades but has come to a head in recent years. The spawn of the super-famous, including the likes of Zoe Kravitz, Lily-Rose Depp and Maude Apatow, have all spoken on their discomfort with the label and received their fair share of criticism.

The conversation came to its boiling point last week when New York Magazine published “The Year of the Nepo Baby,” an almost-definitive guide to the incestuous pool of Hollywood elite (not literally).

The story and its in-depth infographics included such stars as Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of actors Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis) and Dakotah Johnson (daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson). A pop culture moment in and of itself, the spread and its contents have been picked clean by the internet.

But Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t laughing along. In an Instagram carousel containing pictures of her with her famous parents, Curtis wrote: “I’ve never understood, nor will I, what qualities got me hired that day, but since my first two lines on Quincy as a contract player at Universal Studios to this last spectacular creative year some 44 years later, there’s not a day in my professional life that goes by without my being reminded that I am the daughter of movie stars.” Curtis says that “the current conversation about nepo babies is just designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt.”

What sets Curtis apart may be her willingness to acknowledge the ‘leg up’ her proximity to fame has afforded her.

“For the record, I have navigated 44 years with the advantages my associated and reflected fame brought me, I don’t pretend there aren’t any, that try to tell me that I have no value on my own,” she wrote. “It’s curious how we immediately make assumptions and snide remarks that someone related to someone else who is famous in their field for their art, would somehow have no talent whatsoever. I have come to learn that is simply not true. I have suited up and shown up for all different kinds of work with thousands of thousands of people and every day I’ve tried to bring integrity and professionalism and love and community and art to my work. I am not alone. There are many of us. Dedicated to our craft. Proud of our lineage. Strong in our belief in our right to exist.”

She closed out the post with a quote from the movie EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, in which she played the iconic role of Deirdre Beaubeirdre in a way no one else could — nepotism notwithstanding.

“NOTE TO SELF:
BE KIND,
BE KIND;
BE KIND:”

Photo courtesy of BFA/ Sean Weiss