Today’s issue is free and the only one I’m sending out this Thanksgiving week. I need to clear my schedule for cleaning up all the stuffing my 1-year-old will throw on the floor (to say nothing of whatever she has planned for cranberry sauce). One thing I’m especially grateful for this year, from the bottom of my heart, is all of you!!!! Thank you for signing up for these emails and thank you especially to those of you who are paying for this work. You are supporting a new business model for fashion media that isn’t dependent on advertisers who demand positive coverage, chasing scale with clickbait, or gift guides that go up in August for the benefit of Google’s algorithm. If you’d like to support more of this work and get two Back Row posts per week (plus the full all-new “Confessions” coming out next week!), become a paying subscriber for $5 a month or $50 annually.
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Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis’s daughter Lily-Rose Depp has a new HBO show to promote called The Idol, which led to Elle profiling her and headlining the story “The Idol Rising.” (Related: please see Back Row’s recent post about how celebs are always “rising.”) Depp has been a face of Chanel since she was 16 years old (and, except for one panty credit, wears full Chanel in the 14 photos of her that go with the story). Writer Véronique Hyland did a fabulous job with this interview, asking uncomfortable questions celebrity profilers often seem unwilling or unable to raise, about everything from her dad’s defamation trial against Amber Heard to nepotism. Depp, whom Hyland writes possesses a “craving for mystique” handled the growing-up-with-famous-parents question pretty well:
Growing up, “my parents protected my brother [Jack] and me from [fame] as much as possible,” she says. “I know my childhood didn’t look like everybody’s childhood, and it’s a very particular thing to deal with, but it’s also the only thing that I know.”
Regarding having her own fame today, Depp says:
“It’s kind of a double-edged sword, because when you’re an artist, you make things in the hope that they’re going to connect with somebody. But then it also comes with this thing where people feel like they know you, even though they don’t… I’m not here to give myself to the world to be eaten alive.”
Even though that’s what fame is, isn’t it? Receiving so much attention and adoration that being eaten alive becomes the natural byproduct? Which is something she likely would have seen through her parents? If that comment didn’t betray Depp’s naivety, the nepotism question surely did. Had Depp heard about the whole “nepo baby” thing on the internet? The blithely used term often comes up in reference to famous models just like her.
“The internet seems to care a lot about that kind of stuff. People are going to have preconceived ideas about you or how you got there, and I can definitely say that nothing is going to get you the part except for being right for the part,” she says. “The internet cares a lot more about who your family is than the people who are casting you in things. Maybe you get your foot in the door, but you still just have your foot in the door. There’s a lot of work that comes after that.”
She does find it “interesting,” however, that she rarely hears anyone refer to a man as a nepo baby. “It’s weird to me to reduce somebody to the idea that they’re only there because it’s a generational thing. It just doesn’t make any sense. If somebody’s mom or dad is a doctor, and then the kid becomes a doctor, you’re not going to be like, ‘Well, you’re only a doctor because your parent is a doctor.’ It’s like, ‘No, I went to medical school and trained.’” Ever careful, she’s quick to add that she is by no means comparing her own work to that of someone in the medical field. “I just hear it a lot more about women, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence
As predicted, the internet cared a lot about Depp’s comments. Top model Vittoria Ceretti posted her thoughts to her Instagram story, writing, “i get the whole ‘I’m here and i work hard for it’, but i would really love to see if you would have lasted thru the first 5 years of my career.’”
Model Anok Yai responded as well, writing that when she was starting out, she saw herself on billboards but had “a few dollars to my name,” adding, “I had to fight for Every. Single. Thing.”
I have no doubt that being a famous young woman in the internet age, even if you have rich and famous parents, can be really terrible, even if you have more resources to deal with the terrible-ness than the average person. And I expect Depp, who is 23 years old, to be naive. But I also expect the people she pays to craft her image to help her come up with better answers to a question like “how do you feel about being called a ‘nepo baby’?” She almost certainly had media training to come up with talking points before she embarked on a press tour to promote this HBO show. She could have said something like, “I know I have enormous privilege and I’m grateful for everything it’s brought to me in my life and career. I realize I might not have this life if I had been born to different parents. [Insert pivot to how her TV show character connects to nepotism or family or whatever.]”
Nepotism is not only not fair, it’s a pernicious aspect of life in America. It’s evident in our education system, and surely most industries. It benefits people born, through no fault of their own, to parents with enough money to live in good school districts and go on to good colleges and jobs. It benefits John Tyson, the CFO of Tyson Foods and the chairman’s son, who allegedly got drunk and fell asleep in a stranger’s home in her bed earlier this month, only to be arrested. (His job paid the previous person in the role $5.2 million last year.) Nepotism is one reason it’s so hard to believe in the American Dream — that hard work is enough to take you wherever you want to go in life.
That said, “nepo babies” are unlikely to go away — in fashion and entertainment or the poultry business. In fashion and entertainment specifically, that can perhaps be attributed to two things. First, those who grew up with famous parents are able to shed light on what that’s like, which scratches a certain itch born of our culture’s deeply ingrained idolatry of fame. Just as we are socialized from a young age to believe in the American Dream, we are also socialized to believe in the desirability of fame. Second, we want to see celebrity kids! We are curious about Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis’s offspring the way we’re curious about Jenna Lyons joining the cast of The Real Housewives of New York.
What surprises me is not that rich and famous twentyish-year-olds don’t understand this or that the media perpetuates it — what surprises me is that the nepo babies themselves so seldom have a way to discuss it that doesn’t make them sound as oblivious as they so often do.
Here’s what Kendall Jenner said last year on a Keeping Up with the Kardashians reunion hosted by Andy Cohen, who asked, “What do you say to those who accuse you of using your platform on the show to become a model, or that you didn't properly pay your dues?” Per PopBuzz:
"Everyone around me, whether it's friends or family knows how hard I worked and how hard I still work. I did everything that I was supposed to do and had to do to get to the position that I'm at now as a model. I went to every single casting and ran all over, not only New York City, but all over Europe, trying to get a job and make my way."
She continued: "Of course, I had a platform, and I never took that for granted, but that almost made my job a little bit harder because people didn't want to hire me because I was on a reality show. I took my last name off of my modelling cards so that I was taken completely seriously. I literally went to the middle of nowhere castings."
Kendall ended by saying: "I definitely worked my way to where I am now."
Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon was featured on Vogue’s September 2021 cover alongside a group of other top models, and told the magazine, “People think I’m this talentless rich kid who’s had everything given to her, but I’m not.” As the daughter of one of the most successful pop stars of all time, this kind of statement — that she’s not actually a rich kid? which is how it reads — presumes real cognitive dissonance on behalf of the audience. As does a young woman belonging to the most famous family on the planet crediting her success entirely to hard work.
The justified outcry over “nepo babies” that has long been coursing through social media should provide further impetus for agents to discover faces outside the obvious bloodlines. Gen Z is more attuned than any other generation to both privilege and the myriad ways our socioeconomic system is rigged, from casting movies and TV shows to simply finding a path to home ownership or attaining other trappings of a comfortable middle class life that are, for too many, increasingly out of reach. The fashion industry should also work to ensure that entering modeling doesn’t mean being preyed upon by agents encouraging 18-year-old girls to go into debt for a chance at massive success that is likely to never come. This is an industry in which success comes easier to those for whom going into debt is not a possibility, making it ripe for nepotism. The Kendall Jenners of the world work hard not just to succeed but also so that they can tell us all about it later. Meanwhile, young women like Yai and Ceretti work so hard because they know a seat at the table isn’t enough. They work hard for success because they have no other choice.
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Publicists can be so out of touch -- they don’t realize this “yeah, my parents are famous, but I work hard!” talking point isn’t going to play well. But I think media training that totally defangs a celeb can backfire too. Because then the celeb is boring.
I’d like to know how LRD really feels about being a nepo baby, even if that response gets her in trouble. But the response she went with tells me that perhaps she hasn’t really come to terms with how she feels.
Maybe the canned “I’m grateful” response would have been best, like you said.
Hollywood is a bore! I feel like that SATC character who fell out the window.
The “Artist” LRD doesn’t seem to have the decency to be grateful. So nonchalant about her success it’s quite apparent she is clueless.
Thank got I cancelled my Vogue subscription a while ago.