Yahoo Lifestyle Billie Eilish's Mom Rejects 'Nepo Baby' Accusations
Billie Eilish’s mom thinks the “nepo baby” discourse surrounding her daughter is “hilarious.”
Maggie Baird sat down with Glamour for a story about the mothers behind some of “the world’s biggest superstars,” and spoke about how she’s been accused on social media of raising a “nepo baby” simply because she herself has had an acting career.
The chatter went viral when Baird’s cameo in a 1999 episode of “Friends” resurfaced.
“I think it’s hilarious,” Baird, 65, told Glamour in the article, published Thursday. “Because that came out, and it was like, ‘Oh, Billie is a nepo baby.’ And I’m like, ‘Did you know that I got that episode of Friends because I was about to lose my health insurance?’”
“My husband and I are working class actors,” Baird continued. “We eked out a meager living, and it afforded us a lot of time with our kids, which was awesome. But the industry is primarily people like us or even people not even like us who couldn’t even do that.”
Baird said she and her husband, Patrick O’Connell, had “never even been on that side” of fame and wealth “when all of this happened to our kids” ― referring to the Grammy-winning, platinum-selling musical success of her daughter and her songwriter son, Finneas.
Some social media users have nonetheless slammed Eilish as nothing but a lifelong rich kid.
“In almost every magazine cover Billie eilish cries about not being poor anymore when she was literally from a wealthy family and both her parents are actors,” wrote one person on X in June. “She is a NEPO BABY. GIVE HER THE SAME ENERGY YOU GIVE OTHERS.”
Baird started out with small parts on 1980s soap operas like “As the World Turns” and has appeared in episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The X-Files.” She spent most of her working days as a music and sketch comedy teacher.
While some of her improv pupils at the Groundlings reportedly included now-famous performers like Melissa McCarthy, Baird told Glamour that those days marked “a very different life than on this side of the door where you’re suddenly playing in this different arena” as the mother of an A-lister.
Baird and her husband homeschooled their children and seem to have helped nurture them into creatively inclined people, if their record-breaking accomplishments are any indication. (Between the two of them, Eilish and her brother have won four Oscars and 19 Grammys.)
While some might argue her pedigree helped boost Eilish into stardom, Baird disagrees that this makes her daughter a “nepo baby” — and said that for many actors, inner fulfillment is the real goal.
“I think that people don’t really understand there’s a whole industry of people who are creative and they’re working and they’re struggling,” she told Glamour, “and they make perfectly happy lives, and they feel creative, and they feel fulfilled.”
