Hailey Bieber doesn’t care that you call her a nepo baby — because she calls herself that too!
In an interview with Bloomberg’s The Circuit, Bieber, 26, talked about the reaction she received when she wore her infamous white tee that read “nepo baby” across the front. The model explained to host Emily Chang that she wasn’t trying to make a statement with the shirt, she just wanted to acknowledge her family’s famous roots.
“My point to having worn the T-shirt was not to poke fun at it or be like, ‘Yeah I’m a nepo baby haha,’ type of a thing,” the supermodel said. “It was more so to be like, ‘This is what everyone is saying and I want you to know that this is my way of responding to it.’ ”
She added: “I’m just going to call myself a nepo baby, because I am one, and I embrace that I am.”
The Rhode Skin founder revealed that she thought it would be funny, but she still received backlash from people online telling her she wasn’t really “that much of a nepo baby.”
“What was funny about that to me, the way the internet is, it’s like nothing’s ever enough,” she said. “You’re going to sit there and call me a nepo baby all day long, but then I acknowledge it and then I’m not enough of a nepo baby? There is never any winning with the internet, and that’s what I’ve always time and time again realized.”
In January, Bieber – who is the daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin and wife of Justin Bieber – stepped out wearing the “nepo baby” tee with a black bag, blue jeans and an embellished silver and black belt.
While Bieber is embracing the phrase, others like Jamie Lee Curtis have expressed their concerns about it. In December, Curtis, 64, called herself an “OG Nepo Baby” by sharing throwback photos of herself with famous actor parents Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh on social media.
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“I have been a professional actress since I was 19 years old so that makes me an OG Nepo Baby,” the Halloween star wrote. “I’ve never understood, nor will I, what qualities got me hired that day, but since my first two lines on Quincy as a contract player at Universal Studios to this last spectacular creative year some 44 years later, there’s not a day in my professional life that goes by without my being reminded that I am the daughter of movie stars.”
“The current conversation about nepo babies is just designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt,” she continued. “For the record, I have navigated 44 years with the advantages my associated and reflected fame brought me. I don’t pretend there aren’t any, that try to tell me that I have no value on my own.”
Tom Hanks also weighed in on the conversation, telling Reuters, per The Sun, about his role in A Man Called Otto and the “family business” of entertainment. Hanks, 66, shares his spotlight in the industry with wife Rita Wilson and his four kids: Colin Hanks, Elizabeth Hanks, Chet Hanks and Truman Hanks.
“This is what we’ve been doing forever,” Hanks said. “It’s what all of our kids grew up in. We have four kids — they’re all very creative, they’re all involved in some brand of storytelling.”
“And if we were a plumbing-supply business or if we ran the florist shop down the street, the whole family would be putting in time at some point, even if it was just inventory at the end of the year,” the Cast Away actor added.
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