The Year of the Nepo Baby - An Investigation
New York magazine|December 19, 2022 - January 01, 2023
Hollywood has always loved the children of famous people. In 2022, the internet reduced them to two little words.
By Nate Jones
The Year of the Nepo Baby - An Investigation

HOW A NEPO BABY IS BORN

In 2022, the internet uncovered a vast conspiracy: Hollywood was run on an invisible network of family ties-and everybody was in on it! Everyone is someone's kid, but it was as if everybody were somebody's kid. Euphoria, the buzziest show on television, was created by the son of a major director and co-starred the daughter of another. Actress Maya Hawke was not only born to two famous parents but looked like them, too. Half of Brooklyn's indie artists had dads with IMDb pages. Even Succession's Cousin Greg turned out to be the son of one of the guys who designed the Rolling Stones' lips logo. Aghast, content creators got to work. An unwieldy phrase the child of a celebrity-was reduced to a catchy buzzword: nepo baby. TikTokers produced multipart series about nepo babies who resembled their famous parents, exposés on people you didn't know were nepo babies (everyone knew), and PSAs urging celebrity parents to roast their nepo babies to keep them humble.

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