Jack Quaid isn’t hiding from the “nepo baby” discourse.
The son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid acknowledged the label applies to him in an interview with the Daily Beast published Wednesday.
“I’m inclined to agree,” the actor said about having a leg up in showbiz due to his family’s connections.
The star of “The Boys” also addressed his famous mom defending him from the term. Last year, Ryan, 62, told Glamour: “That nepo stuff is so dismissive of his work ethic, his gifts, and how sensitive he is to the idea of his privilege.”
“My first thought was like, she’s being a mom. She’s being a loving mom,” Jack said in response. “But I don’t think she’s trying to say that I’m not a nepo baby. I think she’s just trying to say that, in her opinion, it undermines my talent. I don’t think it undermines my talent.”
He continued: “I know that I work hard, and I know I’ve heard no way more than I’ve heard yes. But I also know that this industry is insanely hard to break into, and I had an easier time doing that than most. Both things can be true. So no, I don’t think she was trying to say that I’m not a privileged person. She knows. She must know. I think she was being a mom.”
Ryan is famous for her many rom-coms, including “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle.” But the “Oppenheimer” actor said that he has avoided that film genre to distinguish himself from her and carve his own path in Hollywood.
“No matter what I do, people are going to call attention to it,” he said.
He went on to acknowledge, “I am an immensely privileged person, was able to get representation pretty early on, and that’s more than half the battle.”
“I knew the door was open for me in a lot of ways that it’s just not for a lot of actors,” Quaid said. “And I’ve just tried to work as hard as I possibly can to prove that I deserve to walk through that door. So if that’s in the rom-com space, it’s got to be different enough, and I need to work my ass off.”
Quaid was one of many celebrity children who were called out in 2022 in a New York magazine story with the headline “She Has Her Mother’s Eyes. And Agent,” which explored the phenomenon of the spawn of famous people going into showbiz themselves.
He’s already enjoyed an extensive career, having made his acting debut with a minor role in “The Hunger Games” in 2012. He’s also currently one of the main stars in Amazon’s superhero series “The Boys,” and appeared in the 2022 reboot of “Scream.”
Ryan and the “Parent Trap” actor, for their part, got married in 1991 and divorced in 2001.
Dennis, 70, said in an interview with Megyn Kelly in 2018 that his marriage to Ryan was “the most successful relationship of my life.”
“When we met I was the big deal,” the “Far From Heaven” actor recalled, noting that Ryan’s fame grew over time.
“We’d go out on the streets of New York and it would be like, ‘Meg! Meg!’ And I have to admit it, I actually did feel like I disappeared. I didn’t think I was that small, but I was. It was a growth opportunity — I learned from that,” he said.
In 2021, Dennis said on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” that Jack turned down his father’s help when he was starting off in the business.
“My agent wanted to represent him, and he said, ‘No, I want to do it on my own,’ ” Dennis recalled. “Then, of course, he gets an agent on his own, and then his first movie is ‘Hunger Games.’ And then he gets in [Martin] Scorsese’s ‘Vinyl’ on television, which was the hottest show there was.”
He gushed: “Even more than an actor, he’s turned out to be a really fine man.”
