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- A24
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- Vertical Entertainment
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- Disney Channel
Nepo Baby Projects That Were All Kinds Of Controversial
Nepo babies - that is, people whose famous parents give them a leg up in certain industries - can sometimes be involved in really cool projects. That said, they can also be involved in some major controversy.
Some of these projects courted controversy because of the nepotism itself - for example, Maya Hawke was well aware that she was cast in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because her dad is Ethan Hawke and her mom is Uma Thurman. Other times, the projects themselves were controversial, like Gwyneth Paltrow promoting misleading health information.
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The Nepo Baby: Gwyneth Paltrow, daughter of actress Blythe Danner and director Bruce Paltrow.
The Project: As the name implies, this is a documentary series about Gwyneth Paltrow's wellness company, Goop. It deals with alternative lifestyle and wellness topics, ranging from female sexuality and psychedelic drugs to mediumship and energy healing.
The Controversy: Goop has always been associated with pseudoscience - they were once forced to pay a $145,000 fine for making false claims about their “jade eggs” - which are inserted vaginally - helping with bladder control and better orgasms. In reality, it is more likely to cause a bacterial infection.
The documentary series contains even more misinformation. Some of their claims can be partially substantiated by research, like the idea that using psychedelic drugs can help with psychiatric symptoms. However, the Goop Lab also promotes practices that are not only false but also actively dangerous.
Vampire facials, for example, involve smearing a person's blood all over their face. A spa in Albuquerque was actually shut down after two clients tested positive for HIV.
In an interview with Mashable, Gwyneth dismissed the criticism, stating:
We think that that's all clickbait and bullsh*t. People are able to criticise us now in opportunistic ways. It's a cheap and easy way to try and drive traffic to these sites.
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- Star Trak/Interscope
The Nepo Baby: Robin Thicke, son of actor Alan Thicke and actress Gloria Loring.
The Project: Co-written by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, this 2013 pop and R&B song describes a man attempting to pick up a woman at a club.
The Controversy: “Blurred Lines” quickly attracted criticism for lyrics that seemed to promote violence against women. Lyrics cited included:
Tried to domesticate you
But you're an animal
Baby, it's in your nature (uh huh)
Just let me liberate you (uh huh)and
I hate these blurred lines (hate them lines)
I know you want it (I hate them lines)These lyrics were thought to imply that consent isn't really important and that women who say no are secretly saying yes.
Robin didn't exactly do a good job of defending himself. In an interview with GQ, he said that the song wasn't a problem because he and the other men involved were happily married. He also claimed that it was degrading to women, but that that was a good thing:
We were like, ‘We’re the perfect guys to make fun of this. People say, ‘Hey, do you think this is degrading to women?’ I’m like, ‘Of course it is. What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman. I’ve never gotten to do that before. I’ve always respected women.’
So we just wanted to turn it over on its head and make people go, women and their bodies are beautiful. Men are gonna want to follow them around.
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- HBO
The Controversy: Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of actor Johnny Depp and singer Vanessa Paradis.
The Project: The Idol is a five-episode TV series about a pop star trying to reclaim her former glory after a nervous breakdown. In the process, she starts a complicated relationship with a cult leader.
The Controversy: The production issues that came up during the show's development were, as one source put it, "wildly, disgustingly off the rails." When the show was about 80% finished, director Amy Seimetz quit. It's not clear exactly why, but co-creator The Weeknd was apparently unhappy with the creative direction of the show and felt that it focused too much on the “female perspective.”
Sam Levinson took over as director and changed the story in a way that many of the people involved were not happy with. One production member said:
It was like any rape fantasy that any toxic man would have in the show — and then the woman comes back for more because it makes her music better.
Lily-Rose played the main female character. Despite all the problems, she had mostly positive things to say about the experience:
Never have I felt more supported or respected in a creative space, my input and opinions more valued. Working with Sam is a true collaboration in every way — it matters to him, more than anything, not only what his actors think about the work, but how we feel performing it.
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- Vertical Entertainment
4'Lola' - Nicola Peltz Beckham
The Nepo Baby: Nicola Peltz Beckham, daughter of billionaire businessman and investor Nelson Peltz and daughter-in-law to soccer player David Beckham and former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham.
The Project: This drama film features Lola (played by Nicola), a young woman who works as both an exotic dancer and a grocer. She works both jobs in the hopes of making enough money to move herself and her little brother out of their abusive mother's home.
The Controversy: Nicola used her wealth and connections to make a movie that journalist Kady Ruth Ashcraft called “poverty porn.” That is, it exploits and sensationalizes the traumatic experiences faced by the poor. Nicola was born into wealth and doesn't seem to have done much research into what it might be like to live differently. She said that she "wanted to write a story from a person’s perspective and another point of view that was not my personal view and not my upbringing. I am an actress and my dream is to get to look at the world from different perspectives.”
Despite these intentions, many people didn't think that she succeeded in depicting those different perspectives in a realistic or nuanced way.
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The Nepo Baby: Jaden Smith, son of actor Will Smith and actress Jada Pinkett Smith.
The Project: After humanity evacuates Earth to escape from a massive disaster, a father and son duo find themselves crash-landing on the abandoned planet. This is the second film starring Will and Jaden Smith as father and son, the first one being The Pursuit of Happyness.
The Controversy: After Earth received terrible reviews. Most of those reviews centered around Jaden Smith, who was just 14 at the time. He was accused of lacking the "acting chops and basic screen presence" needed to make the movie work. This was on the milder end of the critiques - some of the social response was hurtful.
Will Smith was devastated by the negative response to his son. During an interview with People, he said:
After Earth was an abysmal box office and critical failure. And what was worse was that Jaden took the hit. Fans and the press were absolutely vicious; they said and printed things about Jaden that I refuse to repeat. Jaden had faithfully done everything that I'd instructed him to do, and I had coached him into the worst public mauling he'd ever experienced.
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- All Praise Records
- YouTube
6"White Boy Summer" - Chet Hanks
The Nepo Baby: Chet Hanks, son of actor Tom Hanks and actress Rita Wilson.
The Project: “White Boy Summer” is a 2021 hip-hop song that offers advice to white men about how to dress and behave. Its title references Megan Thee Stallion's 2019 song “Hot Girl Summer.”
The Controversy: As you might have guessed based on the phrase “white boy,” this song quickly became about race in the worst way possible. The song was used as a rallying cry and propaganda tool for far-right hate groups like the Proud Boys and White Lives Matter.
Chet Hanks claims that he had no racist intent when he created the song. On Instagram, he said:
White boy summer was created to be fun, playful, and a celebration of fly white boys who love beautiful queens of every race.
Anything else that it has been twisted into to support any kind of hate or bigotry against any group of people is deplorable and I condemn it.
I hope that we all can spread love to each other and treat each other with kindness and dignity.
Love,
Chet HanksControversial?- Photo:
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The Nepo Baby: Ben Platt, son of producer Marc Platt.
The Project: Dear Evan Hansen is a Broadway musical centering around a teenage boy who pretends to have been close friends with a classmate who took his own life. It would later be adapted into a film in 2021.
The Controversy: In both the original stage run and film version of Dear Evan Hansen, Evan was played by Ben Platt, who was 27 when the film was released. Evan is a teenager, which makes the casting more than a little awkward. So, why did he get the role? It could be because he originally played the character in the musical and the production felt like he was the best person to continue the role. But it could also be that his father was one of the film's producers.
In response to accusations of nepotism, Ben said:
The reaction is largely from people that don't understand the context of the piece. The fact that I created the role and workshopped it for 3 years, and did all of the out-of-town performances, and originated it on Broadway, and received the accolades that I did... and also not really understanding that were I not to do the movie, it probably wouldn't get made.
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"Jolene" Cover - Elle King
The Controversy: Elle King, daughter of comedian Rob Schneider.
The Project: On January 19, 2024, the Grand Ole Opry celebrated Dolly Parton's 78th birthday. Part of the celebration involved other artists performing Dolly Parton's famous songs. King headlined the event, performing a cover of “Jolene.”
The Controversy: King's performance of “Jolene” was a full-on disaster. She was intoxicated and couldn't remember the words, so she just made them up. Many people saw this as disrespectful to Parton, but King had her reasons. In an interview on the Chelsea Handler podcast, she said:
I had been going through something very heavy and traumatic in my life at the time, and that day was a really big day dealing with what I was going through — and that I’m still going through — and I suffer from like, severe PTSD. That day, I hadn’t eaten or slept in days. I was really overwhelmed. I was like a shell of myself.
Also, King didn't know she'd be headlining until three hours before the performance - the original headliner couldn't get there because of bad weather.
King wrote letters of apology to both the venue and Dolly Parton. Parton called King and was kind and understanding about the whole issue.
Controversial? The Nepo Baby: Max Landis, son of the famous (and also controversial) director John Landis.
The Project: Shadow in the Cloud is an action-horror film about a female World War II flight officer (Chloë Grace Moretz) who encounters an evil gremlin while aboard an aircraft.
The Controversy: Although the script was written by Landis, he was taken off the project after his former co-worker Anna Akana accused him of sexual assault. Moretz claimed that the film had been rewritten many times in order to erase all traces of Landis, but the fact that they still went ahead with the project is the subject of controversy.
Landis published an essay on Medium entitled “Why I Never Responded To My Public Shaming.” Though he never addresses the specific accusation, he does say:
Some of what’s been said about me is true. It’s definitely true that my instability translated into relationships as emotional abuse, infidelity, and wild unpredictable emotional behavior and tantrums that imploded many of my closest relationships.
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10'Music' - Kate Hudson
The Nepo Baby: Kate Hudson, daughter of actor Goldie Hawn and musician Bill Hudson.
The Project: In 2021, singer-songwriter Sia released the movie Music. In it, Kate Hudson plays a drug dealer named Zu who recently became sober and takes custody of her autistic half-sister Music.
The Controversy: The film received significant backlash about Sia's decision to cast Maddie Ziegler, who is not autistic, as Music. Sia believed that the stress of filming would be “cruel” to inflict on an autistic actor. Autism activists disagreed - the U.K.'s National Autistic Society cited several autistic actors who could have taken on the role. During an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Kate Hudson addressed the issue:
I think when people see the film, that they will see the amount of love and sensitivity that was put into it. But it is an important conversation to have, not just about this movie, but as a whole, about representation. When I hear that there's anybody that feels left out I feel terrible.
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The Nepo Baby: Allison Williams, daughter of NBC Nightly News anchor and managing editor Brian Williams and TV producer Jane Gillan Stoddard.
The Project: Airing from 2012 to 2017, Lena Dunham's Girls is a series about a group of young millennial women living their lives in New York City. The show was intended to be a more realistic depiction of the lives of young women than other series with similar premises.
The Controversy: In the show, Allison Williams played Marnie, who was generally disliked by fans, which led to a lot of people not liking Allison either because they couldn't differentiate between the actress and the character. Allison sees her character in a different light now, thanks to Gen Z:
The whole show got a lot of flak when it was airing for everyone being too selfish and self-centered. My theory is, what was coded as selfishness among millennials is now coded as self-care. Just being aware of what you need and advocating for your needs and standing up for yourself, and so Gen Z, is like, ‘No, we get her. She makes sense to us.'
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- A24
The Nepo Baby: Riley Keogh, the daughter of singer Lisa Marie Presley and granddaughter of singer Elvis Presley and actress Priscilla Presley.
The Project: This 2021 comedy crime film tells the story of A'Ziah "Zola" King, an exotic dancer who is persuaded by Stefani (Keogh) to take her act on the road. Things do not work out the way Zola expects.
The Controversy: Keogh's Stefani speaks with a “blaccent” - that is, she attempts to sound like a stereotypical Black person. This was controversial because it was considered cultural appropriation used in a disrespectful or mocking way.
Keogh was uncomfortable with the idea from the jump. She actually apologized to her fellow cast and crew mates because she believed that her character was “offensive in every way.”
She also stated that it was difficult for her to do the accent at all:
Colman and Taylour would just help me. If I was like, ‘I don’t know how to say this,’ they would be like, ‘Don’t say it like that. Say it like this.’ So it was kind of a group effort to get it right.
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The Nepo Baby: Miley Cyrus, daughter of singer Billy Rae Cyrus.
The Project: Hannah Montana is a teen sitcom that ran from 2006 - 2011. It starred Miley, who played the title character, a pop star with a double life.
The Controversy: This controversy was more of a family affair. Miley's father, Billy Rae Cyrus, had a lot of regrets about letting her star in Hannah Montana as a child. In 2011, the then-18-year-old Miley was photographed smoking salvia, a hallucinogenic drug. Billy Rae believed that this potentially dangerous behavior stemmed from her exposure to fame. In an interview with GQ, he said:
The damn show destroyed my family. I’d take it back in a second. For my family to be here and just everybody be okay, safe and sound and happy and normal would have been fantastic. Heck, yeah. I’d erase it all in a second if I could.
Meanwhile, Miley herself was trying her best to grow out of the childish world of Hannah Montana. She said that as soon as she became sexually active, her opinion on the show changed. She said:
It felt ridiculous. I was kind of like, ‘I can’t put the f*cking wig on again. It got weird. It just felt like... I was grown up.’
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The Nepo Baby: Dakota Johnson, daughter of actor Don Johnson and actress Melanie Griffith.
The Project: Daddio follows a woman (Dakota Johnson) who takes a taxi from JFK, and unexpectedly forms a close bond with the taxi driver.
The Controversy: During a 9 1/2 hour flight from Sydney, Australia, to Tokyo, Japan, technical issues made it impossible for passengers to choose their own in-flight movies. However, the staff could choose a film that would play for everyone. They picked the R-rated Daddio because multiple passengers requested it. Daddio has adult content that wasn't appropriate for the children on board. Ultimately, they switched the film to something more child-friendly, but not before receiving a ton of complaints from irate passengers.
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The Nepo Baby: Lily Collins, daughter of singer Phil Collins.
The Project: This film, which premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2017, tells the story of Ellen (Lily Collins), a 20-year-old college dropout with anorexia. She enters a treatment program but struggles to maintain motivation.
The Controversy: Eating disorders are a notoriously difficult thing to make any type of media about. One has to balance depicting the reality of the situation with avoiding harm to viewers with similar disorders. Despite both its director Marti Noxon and film star Lily Collins having experiences with eating disorders themselves, this film didn't land well with many viewers.
One problem was the long, lingering shots on Lily's starving body. This was real - Lily was asked to lose weight for the role. The ethics of that are questionable to say the least, but the other problem is that no matter what the movie says, viewers could see her body as aspirational. When the characters attempt to cheat at treatment, this provides a guide for viewers who want to do the same thing. The film was accused of being misleading and glamorizing.
Despite these issues, Lily stood behind her depiction of Ellen. She said:
I’ve been very vocal about my experiences so it was important to me. It’s quite taboo even today to talk about it even though it’s becoming more prevalent. To do it in a film to make it entertaining but make it very informational is important.
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- Sony Pictures Releasing
The Nepo Baby: Maya Hawke, daughter of actress Uma Thurman and actor Ethan Hawke.
The Project: Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follows an actor and his stunt double trying to deal with the complexities of the film industry, while also having to contend with the Manson Family.
The Controversy: This controversy is interesting because it directly relates to Maya Hawke's status as a nepo baby. She knows that she was hired to play "Flower Child" because of who her parents are. In fact, Tarantino went out of his way to cast members of what he calls “young Hollywood," including Margaret Qualley (Andie MacDowell’s daughter), Rumer Willis (Demi Moore and Bruce Willis's daughter), and Harley Quinn Smith (Kevin Smith's daughter).
Maya Hawke had a lot to say about this issue:
There are so many people who deserve to have this kind of life who don’t, but I think I’m comfortable with not deserving it and doing it anyway. And I know that my not doing it wouldn’t help anyone. I saw two paths when I was first starting, and one of them was: change your name, get a nose job and go to open casting roles.
It’s OK to be made fun of when you’re in rarefied air. It’s a lucky place to be. My relationships with my parents are really honest and positive, and that supersedes anything anyone can say about it.
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The Nepo Baby: Eva Amurri, daughter of actress Susan Sarandon.
The Project: Saved! is a religious satire about a teenage girl at a Christian school who sleeps with her boyfriend in an attempt to “cure him” of his homosexuality. She gets pregnant and is ostracized by her community. The girl eventually befriends the only Jewish girl in an all-Christian school, played by Amurri.
The Controversy: While some people found this movie to be funny, there was one group that was less than amused - Christians. The film depicts the far-right fringes of the religion but doesn't really acknowledge the existence of more moderate believers. According to Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission, it's "a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith."
But director Brian Dannelly said that his work was “ultimately a very loving film, not against Christianity, but against extremism, which is very different.”
Controversial?The Nepo Baby: Zoë Kravitz, daughter of actress Lisa Bonet and singer Lenny Kravitz.
The Project: In this 2024 psychological thriller directed by Zoë Kravitz, a billionaire tech mogul invites a group of people to his private island. There, strange events involving memory loss begin to unfold.
The Controversy: After the film It Ends With Us debuted, it got a lot of flak for failing to include a trigger warning for its depiction of domestic abuse. So Zoë Kravitz decided that her film needed its own warning. It read:
Trigger Warning. We are proud to finally share 'Blink Twice' with audiences in theaters worldwide this week. 'Blink Twice' is a psychological thriller about the abuse of power. While this is a fictionalized movie, it contains mature themes and depictions of violence — including sexual violence. This may be upsetting or triggering for some viewers. For resources that offer support, visit BlinkTwiceResources.com.
Some people felt that this was totally appropriate given the disturbing nature of the film. In this view, trigger warnings are not about censorship, but about ensuring that people can make choices based on their own needs. Others felt that it was unnecessary. In this view, trigger warnings spoil the movie. Not only that, but anything can be a trigger, so it's impossible to fully anticipate everything.
Ultimately, there might have been controversy no matter what Kravitz and the rest of the crew chose to do, so erring on the side of not giving people panic attacks is probably a good call.
Controversial?
