Here is the real advantage Hollywood's 'nepo babies' enjoy– Laura Waddell

Nepo babies don’t have to choose between surviving and thriving

The nepo baby debate has largely taken place in a particular register: the nervous giggling of celebrities vaguely aware the curtain is being pulled back, and that instead of fame being revered, its mechanics are being scrutinised.

Of the many children of nepotism in Hollywood asked about this, there have been bad and good answers. Girls actor Allison Williams – whose parents are a newscaster and a TV producer – got it right when she said last year: “All that people are looking for is an acknowledgment 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. To not acknowledge that me getting started as an actress versus someone with zero connections isn’t the same — it’s ludicrous. It doesn’t take anything away from the work that I’ve done. It just means that it’s not as fun to root for me.”

In contrast to this, Dakota Johnson, daughter of actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, and granddaughter of Alfred Hitchcock starlet Tippi Hedren, said this week on the American Today Show she finds the whole nepo baby discourse thing ‘incredibly annoying and boring’. Well, she would.One of the latest contributions has come from Maya Erskine, star of the new Mr and Mrs Smith adaptation alongside Donald Glover, who said ‘Sure, they have a door that's open for them that's not open for others, but once they're through that door, they have to prove themselves. I think people who don't like nepo babies are jealous.’

Paris Hilton’s ‘Stop being poor’ slogan t-shirt of 2005 was at least tongue in cheek.

Monty Python star Eric Idle was in the news this week doing his bit to challenge the notion there’s a ‘making it’ stage where all worries fade away; through the door to a tier of success, or in the entertainment industry, fame, where the floor you stand on is forevermore firm. He’s been transparent about a need for money at 80, something that still feels taboo for anyone in the public eye to admit thanks to tabloid scoops on ex-boy banders and soap stars trying to adjust to civilian jobs after fame has run out.Idle stated on social media: ‘I don't know why people always assume we're loaded. Python is a disaster,’ but it seems it snuck up on him too, because he added, ‘I never dreamed that at this age the income streams would tail off so disastrously.’

I can think of three reasons why it might surprise people. Firstly, ownership of intellectual rights are a mystery to the public at large, secondly, that because the British acting and comedy scene of Idle’s heyday is so overwhelmingly Oxbridge, having to actually work for a living is the thing that has become self evidently newsworthy, and thirdly, the starry-eyed myth about making it and living happily ever after may be delusional, but it is persistent.In any creative industry there is a big difference between being assured your bills are paid, and having to work to pay them. Between having financial security and not. That’s why we have such a stark class difference in the arts and entertainment industries that the UK governments, in slashing arts funding, seem hell bent on dragging on.

Erskine’s comments were flippantly ignorant about how difficult it is to sustain a decades-long creative career with booms, busts and fallow periods, even for those who’ve had some, or even a lot, of success at different points.

No matter how talented people of ordinary incomes are, without having a father named in the Panama Papers, it’s a lot more possible to fall through the gaps between bookings.This isn’t limited to the screen, but across industries with creative workers on freelance contracts working project to project. The most up-to-date figure on the average earnings of a professional author is a mere £7,000. Many of those earning something similar to that median line will be doing well, in terms of sales and visibility - plugging away at festivals, getting media coverage, doing everything they can right to engage with readers and do the labour of self marketing. Who falls away are those who can’t afford to live alone on that, and who can’t, for any number of reasons, balance two careers while nurturing and growing both. Careers of the independently wealthy, especially the well connected, are easier to get off the ground, but just as crucially, persist in the face of rejection and recover from setbacks and illness.A safety net allows - encourages - the kind of risk-taking that creatives can thrive on. How this manifests in the longer term is in the difference between being able to take projects that are personally innervating or career-boosting over having, absolutely having, to take some job that will pay imminent bills. All of these things are why, in general, creatives with some money behind them are better equipped to go the distance. Lacking that security is ultimately what diverts others down distracted career paths, away from what they’d like to be doing or what they’re really talented at, in the search for consistent income, especially as responsibilities in life such as mortgages and childcare, accumulate. Nepo babies don’t have to choose between surviving and thriving. They don’t have to think about any of this.Without having had to truly rely only on themselves, nepo babies are ignorant of the granular details of survival, when things come down to the coins. It’s no wonder when they open their mouths to talk about the impact of wealth on careers, it’s all such utter drivel.