Jack Quaid doesn’t shy away from being called a “nepo baby.”
“No matter what I do, people are going to call attention to it. People have called me a ‘nepo baby.’ I’m inclined to agree,” said the 32-year-old “The Boys” star, whose parents are Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. “I am an immensely privileged person, was able to get representation pretty early on, and that’s more than half the battle.”
Quaid was asked on The Daily Beast’s “The Last Laugh” podcast if he consciously tried to avoid romantic comedies to avoid comparisons to his mother, whose credits include some of the greatest films in the genre, from “When Harry Met Sally” to “You’ve Got Mail.”
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“It was a little bit of a conscious decision to not do it as much. It’s just got to be right, because, you know, my mom is the undisputed queen of rom-coms. So I can’t just get into that space, it’s got to be right,” said Quaid, who starred opposite Maya Erskine in the 2019 critically acclaimed rom-com “Plus One.”
“So I can’t just get into that space, it’s got to be right. It’s got to be something that feels different enough from what she’s done,” Quaid added. “I’m not looking to take her place or anything.”
Speaking of Ryan, the “Sleepless in Seattle” star recently defended her son against being called a “nepo baby” in a Glamour magazine profile. “Jack is really talented. He’s more of a natural than I’ll ever be,” Ryan said. “That nepo stuffis so dismissive of his work ethic, his gifts, and how sensitive he is to the idea of his privilege.”
Quaid addressed her comments in The Daily Beast interview by saying, “She’s being a loving mom. But I don’t think she’s trying to say that I’m not a nepo baby.”
He continued, “I think she’s just trying to say that, in her opinion, it undermines my talent. 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. 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.”
The concept of the “nepo baby” consumed the internet in 2022, in part thanks to a New York magazine cover story that offered a “definitive guideline” to Hollywood’s most privileged offspring. Some famous children of celebrities have balked at the term (like Jamie Lee Curtis, who wrote that “the current conversation aboutnepo babiesis just designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt”), while others, like “Girls” star Allison Williams, have embraced it.
“All that people are looking for is an acknowledgement that it’s not a level playing field. It’s just unfair. Period, end of the story, and no one’s really working that hard to make it fair,” said Williams, the daughter of NBC news anchor Brian Williams. “To not acknowledge that me getting started as an actress versus someone with zero connections isn’t the same — it’s ludicrous.”
