Emma Roberts thinks people are leaving out an important point in the ongoing “nepo baby” discourse.
During an appearance on Tuesday’s episode of the iHeart podcast “Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi, the “American Horror Story” actor — who’s the daughter of actor Eric Roberts and the niece of Julia Roberts — said that she believes the public only witnesses the successes of actors from famous families.
“People kind of only see your wins because they only see when you’re on the poster of a movie,” Emma Roberts said. “They don’t see all the rejection along the way.”
She explained that she’s often open about when she doesn’t get a role she auditioned for because she believes people will otherwise think “everything’s been so great and linear and easy.”
Earlier in the discussion, Emma Roberts said that while people often call out “nepo babies” for having a “leg up” in Hollywood, the other side to that is that “you have to prove yourself more.”
“Also, if people don’t have a good experience, maybe with other people in your family, then you’ll never get a chance,” she said.
“Young girls, I feel like, get it harder … with the ‘nepo baby’ thing,” she later added.
Jeff Kravitz via Getty Images
The discourse surrounding “nepo babies” in recent years was fueled by a much talked-about 2022 New York Magazine cover story that dug into the world of Hollywood nepotism.
The term, short for “nepotism babies,” describes children of actors, singers and other celebrities who benefit from their parents’ fame or connections.
Emma Roberts has publicly talked about the career of her Oscar-winning aunt, and how the “Eat Pray Love” actor has inspired her own career.
Richard Gere, who starred alongside Julia Roberts in classic films such as “Pretty Women” and “Runaway Bride,” played the father of Emma Roberts’ character in “Maybe I Do.”
While promoting the film last year, Roberts told The Associated Press that acting alongside Gere in the film was “full circle in the Roberts family.”
On Bozzi’s podcast, Roberts said that she’s witnessed the darker side of fame through her aunt’s experiences — and from some recent experiences of her own.
“It’s fun and it’s great, but there is a part of it that’s really scary,” she said. “And so I’ve always wanted to kind of carve my own path of not just [being] a movie star, but do stuff that’s creatively fulfilling.”
She noted she’d recently dealt with a ″stalker situation” that she said was “leaked to the press.”
That “felt like such a violation because I was just so scared,” she said.