Emma Roberts called out how the nepo baby label tends to focus on mostly women when she sat down for Bruce Bozzi’s Table for Two podcast.

“Why is no one calling out George Clooney for being a nepo baby? I feel like young girls get it harder with the nepo-baby thing. I don’t really see people calling out sons of famous actors, not that they should be called out,” she jokingly said.

But she has more to say about the nepo baby discourse.

Emma Roberts and the nepo baby discourse

“I think there’s two sides of the coin,” the actress said.
“People like to say, you know, you have a leg up because you have family in the industry. But then the other side to that is, you know, you have to prove yourself more. Also, if people don’t have good experiences, maybe, with other people in your family, then you’ll never get a chance,” she added.
Roberts said that she believes people who criticize nepo babies “only see your wins, because they only see when you’re on the poster of a movie—they don’t see all the rejection along the way. That’s why I’m always very open about things I’ve auditioned for and haven’t gotten the part for.”

Nepo babies by the numbers

Meg Ryan fires back at son Jack Quaid's nepo baby critics

It is true that the most criticized nepo babies in the media nowadays are women, according to Vulture’s “All But Definitive Guide to the Hollywood Nepo-Verse,” 60% of the nepo babies on their map are daughters or nieces of celebrities.
And while Roberts sort of called out Clooney, he’s arguably the most successful of the named nepo babies out there. He has won two Oscars: the first in 2006 for best actor in a supporting role for Syriana and the second as a producer for 2013 best picture Argo.
However, he’s not the wealthiest. That honor goes to Kim Kardashian, according to Evoluted’s Nepo Babies Index, whose net worth last year was almost $2 billion dollars. And keeping it in the family, the number two spot went to her younger sister entrepreneur Kylie Jenner, who has $787.5 million to her name. Clooney is number five below fellow nepo babies Miley Cyrus and Simon Cowell.
Some celebrities find the term insulting, while others have embraced it.

I’m a nepo baby and I DO have the T-shirt

Inside Out 2’s Anxiety, Maya Hawke, has said she doesn’t mind it and embraces the concept. She’s okay with being made fun of because she’s in “rarefied air” and believes that she’s in a lucky place.
Hailey Bieber hasn’t just embraced it, she literally has the shirt to prove it. Elizabeth Olsen, said that nepotism “is a thing” and that she’s “very aware of it.”
Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow, acknowledges that she had a lot of successes when she was really young and the assumptions people make about a nepo baby’s success is fair. “As the child of someone, you get access other people don’t have, so the playing field is not level in that way,” she explained.
For Zöe Kravitz it’s the family business. Maude Apatow said she “felt a little sad” when she heard that people associated her with the term. Margaret Qualley, who starred in the drama The Maid with her mother Andie McDowell said the show made her even more aware of how she grew up privileged. Dakota Johnson was even was game enough to be in an SNL skit with two other nepo babies and their chant, “A foot in the door and so much more.”
Kate Hudson said she doesn’t care, but said that Hollywood’s not the only industry with nepo babies. Lily-Rose Depp was more serious than Roberts when she said that it’s possible the terms is just thinly disguised misogyny, “I just hear it more about women, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence.” Meg Ryan defended her son, Jack Quaid from critics who have called him an NB, saying it’s dismissive of his hard work.

A word of advice

I feel that as a non-nepo baby myself, I have a more objective view on this. May I offer this suggestion to the NBs? Accept it. There’s nothing you can do to change the fact that your parents are famous. It’s disingenuous to think that you got to where you are only because you worked hard. I’m sure it didn’t hurt to share the same last name as someone famous. Or even if you don’t have the same last name, they’d still know who your parents are.

Being called a nepo baby doesn’t mean you don’t deserve what you have. It means you had it easier. It doesn’t meant that it was easy all the time, or that you didn’t have to work hard to either keep your place or prove to people you’re more than just your last name. It’s also not synonymous to being talentless.
Just… ask Bieber where she got the shirt. And then ask Johnson how to say the chant.