Eric Roberts weighs in on Emma Roberts’ Nepo baby complaints

Emma Roberts has been in the news a lot lately for objecting to the idea that she has enjoyed advantages in Hollywood because of her famous relatives.

With a new movie coming out, Emma Roberts is giving another round of interviews in which she blasts the “nepo baby” label and strongly denies that she gained career advantages in Hollywood by being the niece of mega-star Julia Roberts or the daughter of veteran film and TV actor Eric Roberts.

“I’ve lost more jobs than I’ve gained from being in the business,” Roberts told Flaunt magazine. “People have opinions and sometimes maybe they’re not good opinions of people in your family. I’ve never gotten a job because of it, I know. I definitely have lost a couple of jobs because of it.”

Roberts recently received backing from her father for her claim that she didn’t benefit from her famous connections. In a new interview with entertainment journalist Steve Kmetko, Eric Roberts was asked if he “had anything to do” with his daughter’s success, Entertainment Weekly reported. 

“Absolutely nothing. Except I gave her that name,” The 68-year-old “Pope of Greenwich Village” star said.

During the interview for Kmetko’s “Still Here Hollywood” podcast, Roberts initially said he wouldn’t talk about his iconic younger sister, Julia.

“I love my sister, but I can’t talk about her,” Eric Roberts said. He and Julia Roberts were publicly estranged during the early years of Emma’s life because of his past drug use and because the “Erin Brockovich” star sided with Robert’s ex-girlfriend, Kelly Cunningham, over the custody of Emma. Eric Roberts told People that he and Julia Roberts reconciled in 2004.

Eric Roberts also at first that he wouldn’t talk about his 33-year-old daughter, a rising star with “Scream Queens,” “American Horror Story” and the new Amazon Prime rom-com “Space Cadet.” “My daughter told me not to talk about her,” he said.

According to People magazine, Emma Roberts tends to stay private about her relationship with her father. They haven’t been photographed together since she was a child, and she doesn’t talk about him in interviews or post anything about him on social media — not in the way she does with her mother, with whom she’s said to be “very close.”

For his part, Eric Roberts gushes about his daughter whenever he gets the chance, including posting a throwback photo of the two of them together on Instagram for her 32nd birthday in 2023, People reported. “Very happiest of birthday eves to my precious daughter,” Eric Roberts wrote.

With Kmetko, Eric Roberts admitted that he usually ends up saying something about his daughter in interviews. “I stumble and do,” he said. That’s what happened on Kmetko’s podcast. He “stumbled” in this interview and inserted himself a bit into the “nepo baby” discourse.

After insisting that he didn’t help Emma get parts, Eric Robert praise on her talent.

“I am in love with my daughter’s work these days like I can’t, I can’t believe how great she’s become,”  Eric Roberts said. “I’m so proud of her I can’t see straight. Since her performance in ‘Maybe I Do’ until right now, she overwhelms me with pride and just, ‘Oh my God. Here she goes again.’ And I’m just so happy to be her dad because she’s kicking ass, and I’m so proud.”

Meanwhile, Emma Roberts has voiced strong objections to stories and conversations about nepo babies. She insisted in another interview last month that the discourse is “sexist” because “no one” ever calls out George Clooney “for being a nepo baby” because his aunt Rosemary Clooney was a music “icon.”

“I feel like young girls get it harder with the nepo baby thing,” Emma Roberts said during the “Table for Two” podcast, Indiewire reported. “Like, I don’t really see people calling out sons of famous actors, not that they should be called out.”

Actually, plenty of sons, grandsons, nephews and other male relatives of Hollywood power players received the “nepo baby” label in the 2022 New York Magazine story, which popularized the term after it originated on social media. The “nepo” part of the term is short for nepotism, and the moniker deals with the practice of favoring family and friends for jobs and other opportunities. In the world of entertainment gossip, the term is applied to any up-and-coming star who might have received kind of help in entering show business.

Notably, Emma Roberts’ name didn’t come up in the New York Magazine story, though it features other well-known “nepo babies” — from long-established stars like Jane Fonda, Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Dern to Dakota Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp and Riley Keough. The story also mentions Clooney and Michael Douglas being among the stars who have “been around long enough no one cares” who their famous relatives are. It also mentions other male stars, such as Scott Eastwood and Scott Caan, along with Colin Hanks, John David Washington, Jack Quaid and Deacon Phillipe.

To Flaunt magazine, Emma Roberts joked that she should perhaps be offended that she wasn’t mentioned in the story. But she also said, “It was a cheap shot to put all the celebrity kids on the cover of a magazine on babies’ bodies.”