Nepo babies with Benjamin Dean

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0:55Hello and welcome to Sentimental Garbage, the podcast where we talk about the culture we love that society sometimes makes us feel ashamed of. My name is Caroline and my father, the series creator of Lost, would not be too pleased to hear about this. And joining me is the man whose auntie wrote The Gruffalo. It's Benjamin Dean. Oh my god, hi. I'm so glad to be here and so glad that the news is finally out that yes, I am an epic baby of the person who wrote The Gruffalo. The Gruffalo is your dad. Absolutely. The Gruffalo is absolutely my father. I was about to say, actually, my dad, I was about to say the reason why I'm an FO is because my dad auditioned for Gladiators in the 90s, but actually being a Gruffalo is so much better, so I take this back.

1:30So much better. Oh my God. I do think that I would be a great kind of son of the Gruffalo, so I'm glad that I've got this kind of thing to my name. Yeah, you would represent and show all the ways in which he's understood. You'd be like a real Francesca Scorsese of the Gruffalo. I can see that for me. You would help us reflect back what's so great about him to begin with. I can absolutely see that for me, even though I, hands up, have never read the Gruffalo, even as a child. I know. Like we're two people who write for young people who are absolutely vamping our way through this Gruffalo conversation because neither one of us know what the fuck it is.

2:03Barely tell you what, can barely tell you what that man looks like. Is that a man? Bear? Ox? I don't know. It could be any animal creature. Today we're talking about Nepo babies. I'm so excited. I have so many thoughts. I know you do too, but can you, before we go any further, can you tell me your credentials outside of being the Gruffalo son? Well, obviously I have dad auditioning for Gladiators. I you know straight into entertainment business gave me kind of like the wants to be uh in the entertainment business even though I haven't spoken it's spoken to my dad in like 15 years so yeah absolutely enough baby in that way he went for that gladiators audition and you said sayonara it's like the new he went out for cigarettes and never came back precisely went for milk and just literally never came back through the front door ever again um and then my mom used to write me sick notes for school that were an absolute lie which is how I ended up becoming a fictional writer so here we are I was just like so really it's kind of an astounding level of privilege that I would really wish you would check more at your author event genuinely I think I should bring it up more often so that I seem relatable that I understand my own privilege um my own privilege in this industry but um yeah I'm glad that we're finally getting it out in the open now my mom will be so happy it's good to air it but on all serious note you are an author of some fame and uh the and your children will be nepo babies for sure should you choose to have them um but your most recent book is specifically is a sort of a nepo baby murder mystery first of all what's it called and tell the people it's very funny it begins with the epigraph jesus was an epi baby too yeah i mean it really made me laugh yeah i describe it so the book's called bury your friends and you know sounds very lovely and cheery um but i describe it as a nepo baby slasher where kind of the fractured friendships of a group of privileged teens are put to the test by a serial killer who's hiding in the grounds of a country manor and demands that one of them has to be evicted from the house every hour starting from midnight so you know a bit of a times clock type locked mystery as well okay but um yeah i as soon as i saw the quote jesus was an nepo baby i was like this just encompasses the entire book it is everything i wanted it to be the worst part was was that we actually couldn't accredit it because it was an instagram comment that was quickly deleted by a Napa baby.

4:15Oh my God. Which Napa baby? It was Cruz Brackham. That's very funny. If I'm getting it right, Cruz Brackham had a song come out over Christmas. Oh, yes. And people were just kind of being like, you're a Napa baby. And he responded being like, Jesus is also a Napa baby. I hate that he deleted that because that is so funny. Literally, I was like, oh, you're my new icon. Great. Like, I don't know how that works considering I'm sure he's like 20 and I am 10 years older than that but like icon I was like inspiration exactly what I would say if I was a nepo baby look I'm just following in the path of Jesus himself and the thing is the reason why Jesus was a nepo baby too is such a brilliant thing for Cruz Beckham to say and such a great way to open a nepo baby slasher thriller locked room murder mystery yeah I just like get all the keywords in yeah um is that it's like both true and crazy.

5:10And that is exactly the nexus point of which we sit in the Nepo Baby conversation is that yes, these things are true about these people, but the kind of confabulations of the conversation has gone so mental that I think we need to like step back from the big picture and just debrief on what we think we mean when we have these conversations. Because I think basically Gen Z discovered that the world isn't fair. shock horror breaking news and like we all at different points in our early 20s we all find out in different ways that the world is not fair like um i remember moving to the city and realizing that people could afford to do unpaid internships whereas i couldn't and that these were feeding tubes for the arts and that i was gonna have to take a much longer route to getting into the arts and that is what happened um but also i've now lived long enough in this career where I can look at those people I started out with and they don't have it any better than I do.

6:09And most of them aren't in this sort of industry at all anymore. No. Which is a long way of saying I won and they lost. But you know what I mean? I think you enter the real world as a 21-year-old, 22-year-old. You see all this unfair shit happening around you and you either kind of learn to live with it or you let it sort of, you live long enough to see yourself become the villain with it a little bit oh fantastic quite well done um no i similar similar to me like i remember when i first got a job a full-time job in london i didn't live in london but i lived just outside and i had to do this kind of uh fellowship and i was getting paid for it but like it's the thing when you get a new job where it's like oh you're not gonna get paid for a month and it's like okay well how am i getting to the job because i actually don't have the money to get there from peterborough where i'm from yeah and And I was like...

7:00Oh my God, are you from Peterborough? I am. Me and Gav have a very long-standing joke in our relationship with Peterborough, which is that it's subterranean. Oh, yeah, it is. We just say subterranean Peterborough whenever we see this. I don't know why. It's kind of like the train. Every person goes through it on the train, and I'm the sad person that has to get up and get off. I know. I think that is it. Everyone's like, why are we stopping here? Just because we've never been there, we'd be like, because it's underground. Everyone's like, why are we stopping here? Oh, that one person's getting off.

7:24Great. But I was jumping the train to get into London, to go to work and I would see ticket inspectors and have to dive off the train and get on at a later carriage where they'd already been through I was sleeping in a hostel for a night trying to like I couldn't afford to rent in London because I hadn't been paid yet and another girl who is now one of my best friends so you know love that nepo baby but um her parents were just paying for her to like have a flat and I was like oh great wonderful love that for you I am currently in a hostel room with nine people who are going to Big Ben tomorrow and I am trying to just go to work that's all I'm doing we're going to Big Ben tomorrow yeah I was like and I'm simply just going to work that's all I'm doing that's all I want to do that was when I realized life wasn't fair I was like god I wish I could just stay in London for the for the night in a yeah in a nice bed and room of my own but no never mind and I think in the last few years definitely it was like around COVID where I feel like this inflection point happened a lot where a lot of people not quite young people who I feel like you know probably you were supposed to be at a time when they were starting their careers and weren't able to or they were financially unable to because like I think as bad as things were post-recession when you and I were starting our careers it is probably even worse now and there's less of an even a sense of it could get better because like we've been talking for an hour about like how we both started in digital media and you were at BuzzFeed and I was at the pool and there were still writing jobs around and i just think opportunities have shrank so much and there was also this time where a lot of younger people were spending a lot of time online and they had this connection point where they realized so many of the people that they followed were the children of famous people and that is around 2021 2022 the term nepo baby goes huge like it becomes the word of that period yeah um when did like how did you feel when you first heard the term I think I've gone through the journey of kind of lamenting nepo babies being like oh it's not fair like I had obviously had my life's not fair epiphany in my 20s but like learning that someone can just land their dream job at the age of like 18 with no experience simply because their dad is a film director or a record label exec or something um yet sucks especially when you work especially when you work in the arts which notoriously difficult to even get into get like a foot in the door never mind actually make it um but like I think during that kind of epiphany around like 2021 when this kind of all kicks off I did start to be like well what else am I expecting them to do yes what am I expecting the daughter of a supermodel to do I mean, she's literally been bred for it like a racehorse.

10:21She's got the genetics. Like, I'm kind of expecting you to be a supermodel. Like, I do think the conversation on kind of access to the arts and culture and things like that is more important. I think the Nepo baby discourse is kind of like a distraction from it. Because I do think that we like to blame things on something that almost feels like within reach. and be like well this is so obvious that the reason I can't do this is because nepo babies like this are kind of taking the opportunities from me yes whereas I think a larger problem lies in we can't like access to the arts especially for like people from minorities and working class backgrounds etc it's so difficult to get into and I do think there's a big difference between nepotism and privilege I think they can be combined but like having parents who are rich doesn't necessarily equate to being a nepo baby like but it does equate to having a privilege of like i've got the kind of money to fall back if i fail yes nepotism is kind of like my dad's an exec and i want to be a singer and he's going to sign me to his label precisely it's having the connections it's having a rich family i feel like is again did not have that didn't have nepotism or finances and you're like oh when you look at the arts you're like well if i fail there's nothing catching me here i'm going straight through the floor to hell it's like yeah to hell i claw my way back out of that yeah so yeah i think we often look at nepe babies as being the problem when actually it's like a much bigger yeah it is like um they are the the symptom of a disease and not the disease itself yeah um and then it's like well i don't know sometimes i have the problem where my empathy slider is kind of whack where it's like where I have too much empathy for people with too much privilege and that's something that I have trying to sort of like breed out of because like who who do I have more empathy for the working class artists who can't get into the arts or whatever but I think what often gets lost in an epi baby conversation is that a lot of these people have miserable lives yeah I'm looking in particular like right now at like Gracie Abrams.

12:38Yes. Who I don't really listen to like all that much. I know like that one song that went big on TikTok or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I can't lie. There's people who are going to shout and call me stupid. I had no idea she was an epic baby. I had no idea her dad was JJ Abrams. I couldn't have told you that. And when I found out, I was like, oh, right, sure. Yeah. But people, it almost seems to be like a fun hobby for people to kind of rip into her being like, she can't even sing. She's not that talented. but actually someone like Gracie Abrams is kind of connecting with a really really large fan base who kind of look at her as like oh you're saying something in your lyrics that I relate to and I'm like well you know people connect her and like her sure good good for you yeah but like like I said I I think that then opens the argument of how do you not know who JJ Abrams is or how do you you don't know who her dad is blah blah blah that happened a lot during um I think it was like Maude Apatow or something from Euphoria yes I remember that and everyone was like what do you mean you don't know who her dad is yeah how it's like how are you getting to Jen Apatow through Maude Apatow when it's like you and I grew up like he was like the director that you knew the name of yeah you know but like I yeah I look at like Gracie Abrams and I oh he does feel very like sorry for it doesn't look like a fun life to live where you're trying to you're doing something that you're you do you seem pretty good at you're pretty successful at yeah am i aware that she's got there through success absolutely does my heart absolutely bleed for her being in this level of success no like i don't go to bed at night thinking poor how is she going to sleep right now but like a part of me does look at the discourse and think is this massively inflated and just doesn't feel like it matches what we're mad about here I think what's also interesting is that the critique I often see online is that you'll see some video of like a Dakota Johnson or Gracie Abrams or any of you of or whatever.

14:37And they are being asked by a journalist about their family connections to the industry. And they will respond kind of knackered and kind of like, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I guess it did probably help. But, you know, I'm here now and I'm promoting this. They'll be very kind of like, I'm kind of over this. and then the comments will be sort of so rife with like it's not that she's an epobaby and by the way it is always she yeah um literally always she always fucking she um it's not that she's an epobaby it's that she refuses to own up to it or whatever or blah blah blah and first of all i don't think people understand that when we watch an interview like that of like a dakota johnson on a a press junket circuit i mean you and i both former journalists we have both done press junkets they do not understand the volume of interviews they are doing in a given day and how every single one of them will have a question about their famous parent and that therefore we cannot expect them to be sort of like good humored and wry and like yeah you know what the 40 answers of the same yes right and like i do feel for them on that like god that must be annoying like there is i do sometimes think celebrities do absolutely put their foot in it when like i remember uh patrick schwarzenegger did white lotus yeah patrick right yeah um and i think he did a quote being like yeah everyone kind of thinks i got this role because of who my dad is but like people don't see the struggle that i've had to go through to get here and it's like uh yeah see like you actually had everyone kind of fine because everyone thought you were great in the show yeah what you didn't have them with was moaning that people haven't seen the 10 years of hard work it took to get there maybe it did and in your opinion yeah take 10 years of hard work I'm not negating the fact that maybe it was like hard work and I don't know sleepless nights or whatever but you can't tell me that I should feel sorry for you simply because I didn't appreciate the fact that you've been trying to get a main role for 10 years or something I'm like I don't feel sorry I'm sorry I just don't feel sorry for you like why did you talk just keep your keep your mash up you could have just been the pretty boy from white lotus that everyone loved and thought was great in the show and you're getting loads of like great reviews for and then suddenly you go and ruin it and now everyone thinks you're a bit of a fool i think what often people of enormous privilege miss and that can be because they're very rich or that they parents are famous or a combination thereof what they often miss is that like they don't understand why people don't see that they, yes, that they have wealth or whatever, but they also have emotional struggles, crisis of confidence, issues with their family that we'll never know about.

17:21All we know about is the Wikipedia page. What we don't know about is all the kind of struggle and strife and divorces and whatever, whatever has gone into the average famous person's life. And then they get these questions about their privilege and they think, you know, E.G. Lily Allen, who will think like, listen, you know, I was kind of neglected as a kid. my dad used to bring me to music festivals and like abandoned me and I'd be wandering around by myself I have like a lot of trauma in my background or whatever and they will front foot with that in this very defensive way not realizing that normal people have those struggles also they have those struggles also of neglect and abuse often and they also have the financial thing and you know this isn't necessarily in response to lily allen I'm not who I love yeah who I love and we've done a great podcast about before.

18:10I'm not saying that her trauma isn't not valid. But in general, sometimes I look at celebrities being super defensive about their own privilege. And I'm like, why do you so desperately want to be this relatable? Like, why do you want to pretend that your life has been a huge struggle when you have such a privilege of being able to access where you wanted to get to in the first place? I often find that some celebrities who have this nepotism and privilege often do just want to kind of seem like they've worked really hard to get somewhere and not they approach it really defensive and don't get that like yeah like you said other people also went through that as well yeah on top of the finance stuff and without having like a family of millionaires and multi-millionaires to fall back on like they just try so hard to be relatable sometimes I'm like sometimes you start I'm starting to see this on tiktok a lot as well where sometimes uh influences you have this kind of like wild wealth and lean into it and like here is a day in the life of someone whose allowance is two hundred thousand dollars a month or something stupid and people are watching it being like wow like i'm so tuned in like i feel so poor watching this blah blah blah and they're not complaining because they're like yeah like the person's being quite frank yeah the way is that they're showing them yeah this is wild of me that i have a two hundred thousand dollar allowance but this is what I'm gonna spend it on it's like okay cool like sometimes it's fine to just admit that yeah this is my life and like I've got it pretty good great I'm never quite on board with this is the like unless it's completely valid sometimes you do look at celebrities and you're like yeah you have had trauma to get to where you are now and I very much appreciate that but sometimes I'm like you're just trying to see it's the looking for I mean I think as animals we are very resistant to anything that looks for our pity right because we because we know it's a finite resource and something inside of us thinks this is for children and baby animals sorry and you can't have it unless unless i really feel like you deserve it that is innate within us because we see pity and we see our resources being stretched and we think it's like that it's like that bit in that movie the beach where the guy gets hurt and he's like you have to either die or get better but you can't just stay like this you know it's like you are stretching the resources of the group emotionally just by complaining like this and that is how we feel when we see a celebrity looking for our pity for their fabulous life but i also here's something this is like actually okay so you and i have like talked to you know we've we've done the upfront which is that we are too old to really give a fuck about nepo babies we've kind of made our pile and we're sort of fine with it and we find it amusing it doesn't upset us but what i think is really interesting is how the nepo baby conversation and this conversation we're talking about of like um formulaic pity and like trying to seek pity as part of like a wider brand strategy is the nature in which i think that fame has changed in the last sort of decade um one of the ways is obviously that um i think a sense of fabulousness is kind of left the building like the idea bring that back like being like cunty and being like well i don't know like that sense of like being a little bit um intentionally a bit of a space cadet like the way share tweets yeah the reason we treasure why share tweets that way is because nobody is doing that nobody's just like up in space anymore everyone has to be ground down to life people are sort of afraid of saying things with their whole chest because they're like afraid of online blowback and therefore the only safe territory for them to talk openly is their vulnerability because if it really happened to them that means you can't criticize it because it really happened and it's to do with mental health and like that has become very boring for us yeah i miss i'm sure celebrities absolutely do not miss but like i do kind of miss that kind of like celebrities feeling a million times removed from the average normal person like right like mariah carey who didn't didn't hear that katie perry went to space yeah and she was like what why did you do that and famously like doesn't acknowledge like the passing of time simply because she doesn't want to have birthdays and age herself yeah like i'm like things like that make me laugh because i'm like it's so removed from like what my life is yeah i love looking at celebrity life and being like that's not even aspirational that's just crazy and hilarious it's like it's funny yeah but like i do kind of miss that before celebrities kind of got themselves on twitter back in the day and wanted to kind of be like oh i'm gonna be i'm gonna talk to my fans and my fans and my friends i'm like oh you've ruined the illusion now so you don't see beyonce kind of being like my fans and my friends she comes on and says i have something that i want you to buy beyonce's like i've come to visit you from space yeah like i have come down on my spaceship and here is what i have in fact i saw a off topic slightly but i saw uh an article recently that beyonce is moving to the uk and she was pictured in a garden why would she do that well well america she has kids she was like not here um but like apparently she was pictured in a garden center in the cotswolds and i was just like i hate that i really hate that like i'm so sorry that actually can't that can't be it that beyonce cannot be in the cotswolds like i don't know what it is but like she can't be in the cotswars come on now and like no beyonce can leave the u.s but she has to move to like sorrento or something i just like when i heard it i was like i'm going to ignore this information and pretend i never heard it because like would i refuse it's like in spider-man 3 when he reveals his identity and everyone decides to protect it yeah it's like no i will not observe simply will pretend i literally never saw it but and then like i think i read an article where it's like it's going to be on like i don't know a million acres of land and I'm sure she's got like four miles of land between the house and the fence.

24:07Oh yeah it won't be relatable her life in London. Love but like the concept that like oh Beyonce's down the road like in Oxfordshire or something I'm just so sorry that's wild to me. Beyonce's address in Hertfordshire. Yeah no not for me. Why? No I don't like it at all. I just like. I can't even imagine her saying Hertfordshire. Yeah me either. Like her Texan accent. Yeah. But like um Roberto and had to um hayley bieber wearing the nepo baby t-shirt i remember looking at that when she did it and being like i saw the pictures first and was like that's quite funny actually like she knows everyone's calling her nepo baby as if it's a dragon she's like yeah i am now what and then she made a comment about it and the comment just made it worse i was like i actually know what did she say she kind of sat down and was like it was my way of you know when celebrities say a lot and actually don't say anything right right right it was a lot of kind of word salad of her being like you know it's my way of responding to what people are saying about me and they're saying that i'm a nepo baby and i was like it's like girl just this t-shirt yeah the t-shirt was literally enough and i thought i thought it was hilarious i was like that is so funny being like yeah now now what yeah yeah yeah you could have just left it there and actually what i got was a two-minute response where i was like oh now i this is it again changing nature of celebrity where it is now impossible to just do a thing and leave it there yeah why do you why do you have to make it like comment on the comment on the comment yeah i didn't need that because ultimately she's probably promoting something so therefore we have to answer questions yes which kind of even though i don't use lip gloss i kind of wish i did because that kind of slays as an idea to be honest i don't really observe um hayley bieber but like what i will say is that is that an epobaby sure but she's not even the child of a main baldwin no she's off of a tertiary baldwin yeah and you know what it's kind of i feel okay sorry it shouldn't be heart bleed mini violin for hayley bieber but like often when i see her in paparazzi scenarios or out in public no one's no one is paying attention to her it's always oh you're with kendall or you're with gg hadid or you're with justin bieber and there are all these videos of like the paparazzi pushing her out the way to get to kendall and like she'll be outside of the group and i'm like isn't she the most famous girl in the world so i hear well when you put her next to I don't know Kardashian-Jenner like Kendall she's like the Barbie that completes the set yeah she's like a skipper almost a little bit sorry for her oh my god don't even think you should say that this is what celebrity has done to us it has completely fucked up our empathies damn it oh my god I can't believe I've fallen for it no but honestly like okay it's the thing this is again you know people might hate this but it's like yes is she the child of a lesser Baldwin 100 but also are there people out there doing a lot less with a lot more for example Ireland Baldwin is the child of the main Baldwin we don't talk about Ireland Baldwin ever I was just about saying really hoping to ask me what she does because in my head I was like she does fuck all mate do you know what who knows what she's trying to get started we don't know maybe might be me if I was an EPO baby I don't know would that be me would I just do fuck all I would you would I you You know what?

27:18It's so hard to say. It is. Because the thing is, like, again, because we are so obsessed with reducing down to, like, the kind of the blunt instrument of calling Nepo babies out and whatever, we sort of miss what's kind of fascinating about them, which is that they are people who grow up in a extremely parasitic environment where their parents' jobs rule their lives. They interrupt their school years. They take them away from their friends or their parents just go missing for a long time. They are often the victims of profound negligence, as we said before. And their parents' mental health and wellness is often affected by their job that is so all over the place or whatever.

27:59Like, I remember even hearing, like, a very funny interview with Maude Apatow when she talked about being on family vacation when Judd got the first weekend box office numbers for Walk Hard, which, by the way, is one of my favorite films. and that it was like she'd never seen her father so upset in his life somebody had died and that like the colour drained from his face and like that's just like one funny instance but if we think about all the ups and downs from the celebrities that we enjoy like those children are present for those ups and downs plus the ones that we don't see and yet they choose these industries anyway because they're not exposed to anything else because like they want to get the approval of their parents because like why?

28:40I'm doing it for the approval of your parents, good Lord. That's a recipe for disaster. That's a dynamic we're not talking about. I know we said that nepotism and nepo baby in the discourse usually does, the buck does just stay with women. Yeah. Brooklyn Beckham. Fascinating. A fascinating case. Fascinating case. I look at, I kind of ironically love it. Because maybe that would be me if I was a nepo baby, actually. because we all take we all take the piss out of Brooklyn Beckham for being like what do you do successfully quickly quickly yeah quickly like what do you do like you're a cheese sandwich photographer or something I don't know yeah yeah the photography the sandwich yeah like but can you well I'm not I'm not about to defend Brooklyn Beckham in any way shape or form but I'm like but he also he hasn't done anything he's not done anything but I'm like he's not by any stretch a bad person he's not like a he's never gone to a Halloween party in a Nazi costume for example but like if you if he had the if you had the opportunity would you not try your hat at different a few bits it's kind of like having a hobby and just it's a hobby that's playing out in front of the whole world because your dad's and your mom's a spice girl and your dad's a famous footballer yeah like you're oh i love photography i went through a phase where i thought i love photography did i no no we all thought thank god that didn't play out in front of the world a millennial alive who didn't think they were gonna be well you know i saw the filters on Instagram and was like, I think I can do something creative with this.

30:07Yeah. Did I know? Absolutely not. No. My photographic mind is just not doing what I needed to do in a camera. I have a vision and then I see it and I'm like, that's not what I was thinking actually. Like I take a picture of like an animal and I think it should be going to National Geographic. But like, if my dad was David Beckham and I got a hobby like photography, yeah, I can suddenly see why the people would take the piss out of me being like, oh, thinks he can be a photographer now. Although didn't he go to like I'm just fascinated because he is like I think for our generation he is the first like celebrity birth I remember like I remember watching the announcement on the Ali G show wow that's a throwback that is like burned in my head isn't that famously where Victoria Beckham first coined the nickname Golden Balls it might actually not be on the Ali G show but there's a reason oh I'm not sure all those but all the back when the two of them used to do like late night interviews together I just they're all just blazed in my brain iconic always them two to what makes me laugh is like someone like romeo beckham who i believe is the model of the family but like yes he was a burberry campaign when he was like nine yeah you know that he looks at pictures of david and victoria in the 90s and it's like yeah they did that they ate they ate you know he said mother ate mother ate that you know that because like he's got a shaved head at the moment like david did in the 90s and i'm like yeah are any of those boys queer do we know you would think so would you like one of them has to be your probabilities are kind of there but from those two middle boys one of them's gotta be well there's the one that everyone oh cruise yeah sorry the one everyone is is cruz gay no i don't think so he's actually got one of them's got a much older girlfriend believe it could be cruz beckham and if i'm not mistaken oh don't let me go down this rabbit hole but if i'm not mistaken the girlfriend of one of them dated brooklyn which is why brooklyn and the wife nicola yeah i'm not talking to david and victoria Oh.

31:58Have you not seen this like massive rift between the Beckhams? No. So important context, you are a former celebrity. Yes, gossip queen, sorry. Gossip journalist. Absolutely a celebrity journalist. So no, this is kind of, but yeah, this is not the segment of celebrity gossip I know a lot about. No. Let's just go on. But like from what we can gather, like Brooklyn and Nicola have had a massive falling out with David and Victoria, so much so that they renewed their vows recently and none of the Beckhams were in attendance. Wild. Sorry, but it is though. Were you gasping at your own news? It is wild though.

32:27It is wild. Especially because you were saying like, I remember like Brooklyn Beckham as like the first real like nepe birth. And do you remember a period as well of like, and I feel like this will be relatable and not just like we're London lovies or whatever. But I feel like there was a moment where, when all the kids were still quite young, where there was always a rumor about how well brought up they were. Like you would like go to a hotel or something and they'd be like, we have the Beckhams in. and those boys always asked before they could leave the table or whatever. Everybody had like a story about what a perfect family they were.

33:02They were just sort of like such a fascination and a self-fulfilling prophecy of like, you know what? Like they're two hardworking people who are extraordinary and they've brought up this great family. And now I think what's so delicious about it is like imagining what it would be like if your dad was this preternaturally talented football player who's also gorgeous, who also is like a stunning man who like, yeah, people make jokes about him being a bit thick, but is that just really just kind of like a funny little guy voice as well? Sorry, not to really stick needle in David Beckham, but you know, we've given him a compliment.

33:36But it's the voice is a bit like, um, like Mike Tyson, where it's like, because like, not the, not the, that is the only comparison between those two men, but in terms of like, oh, this formidable athlete and this little voice actually makes the contrast even more darling and makes me more endeared to them. and like but he also he's like you know predominantly gifted in terms of like the branding he's done things that no other athlete has done before and then victoria has like forged this big thing they're both like whatever you think of whatever they're they're so they're gifted they are touched by fate you know what i mean yeah they are hard-working they are grafters and then brooklyn just being this professional hobbyist yeah it's so fascinating and darling and actually now that you mention it like i'm so intrigued by the fact that David and Victoria are notorious for being good at being famous and from so young, from such a young age.

34:26And I'm so intrigued that none of the Beckham kids yet, I know Harper is still like a teenager, but like none of the Beckham kids yet have kind of leaped into like that mainstream success doing something. Like I know Romeo's a model and probably quite a successful model, but like none of them have that same famous success that David and Victoria had at a similar age to like late teens, early 20s, which I find very interesting. But when you're operating on that level, do you think that is very choiceful? Do you know what I mean? Where it's like, I'm sure there have been people who have rocked up because like those two middle ones, perfect bow instructor, both, you know, I'm sure there's people who have rocked up being like, do you want to be in the next season of the White Lotus or whatever?

35:08And there's something, I think when you're operating on that level where like all of your family outings are paparazzi events where everything you do feels like an event anyway everything you do outside your own home feels like work so why would you do actual work again when i say what would i be like as a nepo baby would i do anything i just don't know i just don't know if i would like if you've got all this money and you've not done anything i would be a hobbyist like brooklyn beckham but like i don't think i'd be doing anything literally because i'm like oh this is i don't know would i do something because i'm like it's my passion would i still write books if i was an epic baby if my mom was julia donaldson and she had written the gruffalo would i want to write a book okay can we get on to the julia donaldson of it all yeah because if people don't know why we were talking about the gruffalo so much up top is because um the singer lola young who is that the big single of the summer which was messy yeah um turns out her aunt is julie donaldson of the gruffalo children's book empire whatever and then i think this is when the nepo baby conversation began to lose its power was people being like wait someone someone's auntie is a children's book writer however successful i don't know if that gives them much of it in the music industry did you see that um i actually saw this yesterday or the day before did you see that julia donaldson had done an interview ages ago being like she actually started as a songwriter interesting interesting i was like didn't didn't even well that makes no sense for a picture book author because it's in rhyme.

36:36Rhyme, yeah. I hadn't even thought of it yet. Apparently, I had got her start as a songwriter. I saw her in an interview. I don't claim to know the most about Julie Donaldson, but best-selling author in the UK history or whatever. But yeah, apparently started as a songwriter before doing pitch books. So I'm like, is there some kind of connection she has? I mean, if you think of Lola Young's lyrics, it's like, I'm so messy. Now I'm so fucking clean. You told me to get a job. Me! It's very like, apart from the swears, it's like very turn the page. Well, yeah. A to B, B to C. Turn the page. Now I'm so fucking clean.

37:13Yeah. I can't imagine it as, wow, don't start the conspiracy theory. Julia Donaldson actually wrote these. She wrote messy. But it's, it's, so it's this interesting thing. We, in preparation for this podcast, we were reading a few articles between the two of us. And one of them was a vulture article that makes this delineation of like, when you're talking about nepo babies you need to refer to a larger spectrum which is that yes there is like there's your top tier which is your dakota johnson's right she is the child of melanie griffith and um who's her dad can't remember someone will write in and i can't be fuck googling um and you know and like uh dennis quaid sorry jack quaid who is the child of meg ryan and dennis quaid like that is like top tier nepoism but then there is like the tier down which is sort of industry children yeah so and that is where it gets kind of murkier and more interesting so like kirsten stewart's parents were in the her mother was like a script editor or something billy eilish famously had parents in the industry but they themselves were not famous i was about to say because like people love to be like her parents were in the industry i'm like okay you tell me you ever knew who her parents were before billy came along yeah you don't know what they were doing i think her mom was like a background actor or a minor character in some shows or something but like yeah yeah not to the level that billy idish they can get her into being a world-renowned singer yeah it's fascinating as well because like it's like um all right a lot of these people who were talking about for example you're kirsten stewart a former child star yeah who are the people who are child actors people who live in la who lives in la people who work in the film business yeah yeah yeah so it's like obviously it's a company town yeah you know it makes kind of it makes sense because otherwise you've got kids who live in like rural america who need to get to la for a casting call and yeah that costs again this leads into privilege and being able to actually have a parent who has money to be able to be like yeah i'm gonna whisk you off to la to attend an audition for a thing you might not even get but like i'm not surprised that the majority of children actors have a connection to the industry because when you're that young like I remember I really wanted to do tennis lessons when I was like 12.

39:27Yeah. But like, they're expensive. Because it's a subterranean Peterborough. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. They're expensive though. And like, my mum was like, well, no, I can't really afford to send them. And like, if she knew that I was going to become like, I don't know, Roger Federer, then she probably would have been like, great, yeah, we can do that. But the likelihood is it would be one of a dozen things you would pick up as a child and then abandon. And they drop straight away. And it would be kind of a waste of money. Exactly. If their resources are tight in your house. So I'm not surprised that the majority of kids, child actors are, have someone in the industry.

39:56But having said that, to break the fourth wall, because I actually don't know when this episode comes out. But yesterday, today, Owen Cooper won the Emmy for Adolescence. Okay. He is now the youngest. So you're like the kid that's done? Yeah, he's now the youngest ever winner for leading actor in a drama, I believe. Might have got that wrong, but I think that's right. He is from Warrington. his mom is a carer and his dad works in IT or something like that and he apparently just decided he wanted to see acting because he saw Tom Holland in The Impossible I when I read this I really thought it was going to say saw Tom Holland in Spider-Man and wanted to be an actor yeah in The Impossible what's The Impossible is The Impossible the I don't want to get this wrong could be the tsunami one sure okay about the tsunami and Tom Holland plays is like I'm sure Tom Holland is thrilled that somebody saw that and that is now the Emmy winner has it got has it got no Emmy Watson in it I again might be getting that wrong but he's really Tom Holland's really young in that so apparently Owen Cooper sees him in this and is like oh I want to try acting and then just joins a drama club um a local drama club that I think had been started from by someone in Coronation Street sure but like he kind of said in his acceptance speech at the Emmys like standing there from you know he's from England he's standing there in LA in front of all of these incredibly famous people with this huge heavy statue in his hand being like dreams can come true and like he's like yeah if you can dream if you can think if you can focus on it and you can try and yeah if you actually put your mind to it you can achieve these things and it was I saw a tweet literally on my way here which was like this is kind of like proof that the arts are for working class people like you can make it and often I think it's kind kind of discouraged that like it's seen as a very unstable industry to try and break into it does give that kind of inspirational boost to people who want to make it to be like it is possible because I think you believe it can happen when you see someone else do it yeah so to be able to see someone getting in there without a leg up without any kind of connection into the industry is suddenly standing on the stage.

42:06I think adolescence is like his first major role, his first time being on a TV set. So to win, that is kind of like looking and being like, right, so it is possible. You don't need your aunt to have been the writer of The Graffalo. Yeah, but it's funny with adolescence because it's like, it did really remind me seeing it being celebrated today at the Emmys or whatever is that if you think about shows like This Is England or Skins or like, you know, big ensemble pieces that were about sort of like working or lower middle class people. And they're just, they're quite simply used to be a lot more of them.

42:50Yeah. And it makes me, I don't know, because so much of the sort of prestige TV that we all obsess over now is about either famous people or rich people. like your white lotuses and and your successions or whatever and like salt burn like all the big talking points of the big successful things do tend to be like very surrounding a narrative about money and wealth yeah we're kind of obsessed with it and we've sort of written ourselves our own kind of get out clause as a kind of a cultural society because we're like well if we're punishing the rich people then it doesn't matter then then it's like okay because like one of these wealthy hotel people are going to be murdered by the end of this so it's and they're all kind of miserable so it's kind of okay it's kind of um it's sort of reverse escapism where we tell ourselves that rich people want to escape yeah sure yeah absolutely yeah as opposed to like we want to be them or whatever it's very it's a very odd trend in media lately as opposed to like um yeah like bigger ensemble pieces that are about people who aren't wealthy is like quite rare like or even like shameless or whatever.

43:59Do you know what actually? I mean, it's funny because I may be guilty of doing the same. Like my, I write YA thrillers and the three that I've written so far are all to do with rich, privileged people who are in set. And I often say that I wrote them because they're in settings that I simply don't have access to. And I want to be able to kind of put my own twist on a place that I don't have access to. So first one set in Buckingham Palace. not making that but I'm just nosy they didn't give you a guy a tour no I nearly got I nearly got arrested House of Buckingham Palace doing research for that book because they were like why is it it was dark and I was lingering around in a hoodie just trying to get a scale of Buckingham Palace like what are you doing I was like just book research I promise for a children's book but like I do like I said that it was simply because I wanted to kind of imagine what it would be like if I was allowed access to this kind of space similar to House of Famous is set in Hollywood.

44:56And like, I am not an actor. I'm likely never making it to Hollywood unless I don't know, I write a screenplay or something maybe one day. Which we're thinking. I'm delusional enough to think I could win an Oscar one day. I don't know what for, but I could. Maybe we're both winning Oscars. Here we go together. Here we go. Can't believe we were nominated the same year. Wow, there we go. Love you, hope you win. Yeah, maybe I am guilty of like wanting to write narratives where kind of you see rich people, rich and privileged people getting their comeuppance in a way is that bad i don't know i don't know it's not it is certainly not bad and like it totally makes sense because and again in the same way that it makes complete sense that the nepo baby conversation has become this sort of symptomatic thing of a larger illness which is that we're living through a deep deep you know economical crisis with which there are very few um clear avenues out of it yeah and so and it's also that thing of like um that thing of the the middle class shrinking the the people living in poverty is growing but also the wealth class is also expanding yeah so there are just more people who are massively wealthy that are that we can just sort of look at and and despise now we hear much more about them because of social media we're getting access points to them it is normal to be frustrated but i do think there is like a part to play from the commissioners of being like there has to be a moment where we like tv and film cannot be about big houses and hotels do you know i mean i just i i actually i don't know if that time is coming anytime soon no it does not because like i'm thinking like how obsessed everybody was with saltburn and like yeah that is a story at its core of like a rich family kind of being kind of attacked by a working class person who like quote unquote doesn't belong in their kind of privilege yeah yeah yeah but it is written and directed by a woman who's very posh and has lots of privilege and apparently can just get the person who like owns that actual manner to be like hey do you mind if we film here for the summer and i'm like love love the concept but then like intrigued because i personally i actually did really enjoy saltburn i'm not sure if i'm in a minority when i say that but i know the trailer for her new weathering heights just got released and i was like i'm so in i think it looks fucking great i think it looks phenomenal and people are so mad people are so furious and i'm like i simply love i will be seated what do you think about the i think it was it might have even been amanda seyfried is that i think said that like it all comes out in the wash like yes it's all you can be an f baby and get your foot in the door and get a role etc but like at the end of the day what sticks is are you any good are you talented at what you're doing which i actually don't think is true entirely so i think it's half true yeah i think it's half true in the sense that like um i think people are unnecessarily harsh on emerald finnell yeah and by the way so do i because I think great her cinematography stunning stunning and also like in a time where cinema is like so rarely penetrating the culture everything has to be an eight-part drama now she is a a youngish female auteur who is making stuff that is sticking to the culture like it's and it's not just like you know gross out scenes the bath water and salt burn it's like whenever I open tiktok dialogue scenes from her movies are going around people are obsessed those movie are sticking and And like, they, I think that would happen whoever she is, right?

48:32Like, I think she clearly is gifted. And by the way, nobody has more reasons to be mad at Emerald Fennell than me because her film was called Promising Young Woman. Oh, yes. It came out very shortly after my book, Promising Young Women. So sorry. Is there some behind the scenes gossip that I will never air on this podcast? Absolutely there is. But I'll just let you guys. Can't wait for this podcast to be finished like an ass. I'll spill it. showbiz editor Benjamin Dean but yeah I think what it is true it does all come out in the wash in terms of if somebody is gifted we will find out soon enough it will come apart however what does not come out in the wash is the working class people or not even working class just people not privileged I think I'm using working class as a catch hall for all kinds of people who don't have privilege which means people who are non-white which means people who are queer which means people who are of different gender whatever all the reasons why somebody might not be sort of like quote unquote palatable enough or easy enough for the entertainment industry to take right now their talents are not coming out in the wash because they're not giving platforms to give them and so you can't say things like it all comes out in the wash when only half of the load is going in yeah and also that wow get well i mean wow wow clip that get that on a t-shirt immediately would buy sorry I was the thing was I was actually watching you make like say all this and I was like I feel like we're coming into land somewhere really good right now you really stuck the landing on that one thanks man it's so nice when I have people come over to my house and tell me I'm doing good at my sentences I was just like that was really I was just like there's going to be a real punch to the end of it even better than I expected see now Nepo's uplifting each other it's not way to see more of this they don't do that to each other but like also I don't think that saying it all comes out in the wash does actually equate for the fact that if you aren't actually good or talented at what you're doing some people are just allowed to fail upwards and that works for you know someone who i don't know dad is the ceo of a company or whatever and they're they do an awful job but they're still allowed to keep their job whatever but like some people are you look at there are people who notoriously people look at and say you are a terrible act how on earth do you keep scoring these roles and it's like well you kind of are embedded in the industry and you're allowed to be bad because you don't have it's like you're kind of that's you're in to the industry of you've got these connections to stay i i really do think that like to go back to the subject of the radically changing nature of fame yeah the people who used to be famous sort of like julia roberts meg ryan will be goldberg it's like everybody in the world was like, that person, there is something about that person.

51:19We need to can it. We need to bottle it. They're special and we need more of it. And now I feel like something has happened where, because there are more avenues with which to be famous, so that you can be TikTok famous, you can be Instagram famous, you can be talk show famous, you can be all kinds of different famous. The power of fame has been diluted to the point where we can't just find a new actor and be like, they came up via Juilliard and everyone's obsessed with them. And so now we're going to launch them and now they're going to be huge. It's because we haven't, it's like star power has become so dispersed that we can't really take any big bets on anyone anymore.

51:54So there's no one who can fortify movies in the same way anymore. Particularly young people in their 20s. And so when you're trying to cast a 21-year-old, and I have lots of friends who work in film and TV who say this, they're like, the go-to is Nepos because they have name recognition. Yeah, and you're trying to make that draw. Exactly. And so I do think everything has become about name recognition now. I mean, I think it's why Nigel Farage is going to be the next prime minister. It's because everyone just knows his name because he's been around for a fucking long time. And because England is racist.

52:21Yeah, that part too. That part too. That big part too. Yeah, I... But like a new racist couldn't make a name now. But because we've had this racist around for a long time, everyone is like, well, we know his name. Yeah, I have seen... I can't remember who it was, but someone was talking about the music industry and being like, 20 years ago you could release a song and it would chart at number 47 yeah or chart like number 80 or whatever and your career wasn't over you were now building on that and yeah that song would get up to maybe the top 10 or maybe it drop out completely but like your record label would still work with you to get to yeah x-ray whereas now everyone and you hear a lot of artists kind of saying this in a really like dry humid way but they're being so serious when they say oh yeah you know like the label one a tiktok hit they want something that is palatable to go big on tiktok and it just means that like success in all those kind of creative arts industries are kind of um their foundation has to be built on a very quick trend that will go and then they'll cast you aside and you'll be replaced by someone else very quickly yeah and like something i think about often that i wish i had the privilege is i wish i had the privilege of working on something and knowing that if it didn't work it's okay and i can still try it or i can still build on that yeah whereas sometimes i feel like oh god if this doesn't work and i have nothing to fall back on i could be out of my ass like tomorrow and not have a job whereas like when you are you have that nepotism or that privilege in an industry you can afford to take a really big creative swing yeah and miss completely and really fuck up and still be fine and still not even be out of the industry and okay with money you can still even stay in the industry like i genuinely write i write sometimes out of complete fear that like oh my god if this doesn't work i could be like who's gonna let me have a second chance yeah yeah yeah because you always feel especially when you come from i am i'm black i'm gay my stories are often black and gay and i'm like you always feel the pressure of like you have to prove that our stories matter yeah for them to want to keep publishing or highlighting our stories yeah and it's just you i always write with that kind of fear and panic that oh no what if it doesn't work and i sometimes i'm like god what must it be like to be like yeah i can take this man like what would it be like to be brooklyn beckham and be like i can take this massive swing at being yeah yeah and he's taking the smallest of swings yeah he's a succession of tiny i would be taking the biggest slugs in the world to be like i can give this ago because what's what's the worst that could happen i inherit beckon and manor or whatever they call that place that's the fascinating thing about like your dakota johnsons i wouldn't say okay maybe it's not big swings but she'll certainly be in some bad movies oh madam webb i didn't even see i didn't even see it but like she knows it was bad yeah but she wasn't worried she just done the materialist with chris evans and yeah yeah she was absolutely fine she was like yeah well you know i did that and it didn't work and here i am now so i'm doing fine and i'm like Oh, would love.

55:28Would love that. Would love to be sort of like good, human, jolly. Wait, are we about to hate Neppa babies, love? Did we start defending them? I think we're being balanced, nuanced, and graceful. And that's a good, that's a sign of a good conversation. Look at us, balanced people. Look at us, the balance. Do you reckon they would have the same balance if they spoke about us? What would they have to talk about? What would they have to talk about? Do you know what I really dig about Dakota Johnson as a concept and all who sail in her? I think it's really important that the, okay, we've just spoken, you've spoken very beautifully.

56:03And by the way, I co-sign, obviously I'm not black and gay, I am white and Irish, but I have been certainly made to feel in this industry as though my stories are a trend. I think people kind of sort of saying, but not saying like, you know, you really ought to just like ride this bandwagon as far as it goes, because eventually it will stop and we will be asking you to get off.

56:26it's a feeling and it creates a lot of creative insecurity within you i don't think the entire industry should be made up of people like you and me who are terrified we're going to be booted off the bandwagon i think there should be dakota johnsons who are there to remind us guys it's not guernica it's not it's not that serious it's going to be fine because ultimately she's not she's not obsessed with the movie industry she just lives there yeah do you know actually sometimes i have said that i i often slash all the time right in fear and worry about the future of my career. But I will say that 90 % of my time, aka when I'm not on my desk, is me saying, I just make shit up for a living.

57:01It's really not that deep. Whenever I'm really stressed and I'm like, oh my God, this isn't working. I literally have to look at myself in the mirror and be like, babe, you're literally just making it up in your head. If there's a plot hole, you made it up. So just make up the fix. I don't know. It's completely fine. You're lying to people for a living. You're making up lies so people believe them. That's basically what writing fiction is. yeah it's like i think i always my advice to sort of creators with that is always like take the work seriously when you're doing it yeah but don't take yourself seriously or the work seriously when it's not in the room i'm the first person to acknowledge that my the my job is batshit like when i have friends who work like you know eight or seven in an office doing important things and i'm like yeah so today i was figuring out how i could like murder a character with wk like that's like we're doing two different things and i'm like it's really not that serious and i also have to often remind myself that being an author and a writer was what i always wanted to do when i was a kid and so to be lucky enough to be able to do that now regardless of the fact that i didn't get a privilege or or anything to get into the industry it makes me feel prouder i'm like look at you you got there well done you yeah climbed your own your own little path to get there and you know what the i mean this might be a good place to sort of start wrapping up but like when you when you really know that you had no one fucking helping you and you had nothing and you get to see your name in a bookshop anyway oh my god that it feels fucking great it does it's like johnson never gets to have that feeling it's like that it's like that adele's and take it to tiktok i'm sure there's like a sound which is an adele quote where she's like i did this i got here on my fucking own like everything i did because of me and i hear that sound like yeah me too we're the same the self-satisfied lore building i do around that shit all the time it is the best the best drug on earth i look from side to side and be like you did this you did this you did this well done you got yourself into this mess well done and that is a gift they will never be able to share exactly what never maybe can say that exactly left to right and say i did this certainly not brooklyn beckham sorry i don't think i think i think they do do that but i think they have to have those moments so privately and quietly to themselves and they also have to always question whether or not they deserve to be there yeah yeah that must be a bummer yeah um can we round out the conversation about with our favorite nepo babies my favorite nepo baby is someone who now forgive me i know everyone's you know cancelled and i so forgive me if this person's cancelled i I don't know anything about this person.

59:40But they're your favorite? Yeah, because I sent you a video of someone called King Princess. Oh my God, I love King Princess. I'm so sorry. I've never heard this person. So sorry if that makes me ignorant. But they're talking in an interview and they're, I don't know, their great grandparents like own Macy's or founded Macy's or something. Yeah. And they are the inspiration for Jack and Rose for the Titanic. And watching her talk about this in the interview, hilarious. So King Princess broke through onto my radar a couple of years ago with a song called Cheap Queen. Stunning. Stunning. A stunning song to come out with if you are the heir to the Macy's fortune.

1:00:16Oh, yeah, there it is. But it's like an unbelievable song. It's like I lift to it all the time at the gym. It is so good. I love it. And I think she's great. She's really funny. She's on this interview and it's like her, what the interviewer is asking is like, what is this I hear about your great grandparents not being Jack and Rose in the Titanic, but being the old couple who hold each other in the bed. Because apparently, yeah, one of her grandparents basically gave up her seat in the lifeboat to go down with her. And watching their reaction to that, very me. Very me being like, I would have been on that boat.

1:00:54I know. So sorry to the man in my life who doesn't exist. Sorry to this man. But like, straight in that boat. Are you kidding me? Straight in that boat. But she's so funny about it because you could tell they're doing that thing. and she's obviously had this situation all the time which is like oh people think they have a gotcha moment and she just rides it out she just plays it through and she's just like yeah pretty cunt don't you think yeah I think like to be a good nepa baby you have to have this dry humour and kind of like recognise that it is just a bit batshit I used to I actually know a nepa baby who I used to work with really her parents are very very famous and she's never lived outside zone one in London which I think is wild but like can't wait to hear about that off but she has like the driest sense of humour and she would always crack me up because she just knows like yeah it was batshit I went to a private school and everyone was batshit and life was just crazy I'm very aware that it's silly and I'm like yeah and I think that's why we maybe liked Dakota Johnson dry sense of humour just thinks everything's a bit a bit wild yeah yeah and like again she's an important person who puts into context for us this industry is just a thing she grew up in and she's not that impressed by it and we shouldn't be either it's just again as you said earlier on it's just making up stories it's just making up stories and putting them on TV it's so it's so boring like really and like we need those people to sort of like level out the playing field not in terms of opportunities but in terms of amount of emotion that's being poured into this because you've got people like you and me shivering like whippets like our next book isn't gonna do well we actually need those people to level out the spirit level you know what I mean I was being over here being like have I tapped into enough of my trauma and sold it for yeah right god have I done enough of that and you know who I think was probably the Dakota Johnson of her day I'm listening Angelica Houston.

1:02:33Sure. Because, okay, we're too young to really remember what it was like when she was like a young up-and-coming actress or whatever. We basically know her as Morticia Adams and like various evil queen characters. Slay. And like, she's amazing. But there's something about Angelica Houston, and this is, I don't, what I would say, I do not want to sound rude, I say this with the greatest respect to this woman. She is the daughter of John Houston and a famous ballet dancer, whose name I forget. Sure. Like, John Houston, the biggest director of the 1950s and 60s. Huge. um angelica houston is a profoundly like gorgeous woman yeah but she's weird looking right like she looks like a complicated italian woman like she is not the kind of person that gets like plucked yeah from the street essentially she's the kind of person who like a photographer sees her at a dinner party at her father's house and goes oh she's got an interesting vibe yeah she's sort of like made of liquid amber kind of thing like like let's let's like discover yeah And so, and she kind of sells it in with this kind of queenly, like you can tell she was probably like Dakota Johnson when she was in her 30s.

1:03:38Yeah, you can see that. I don't really care. I've sort of been surrounded by visionaries since I was born. It's kind of fine. I'm not asked about any of them yet. And I think, in that way, nepo babies are good for the beauty standard. Yeah, do you know what you're not wrong? They introduce more weird fishes into the ether. They do. Yeah, you're not wrong. I think of, this is going to be completely wrong because people will probably say that she would have been scattered anyway. but like I do think of Cara Delevingne and the eyebrows back in like 20 I don't know when she was found but let's say like it was not an eyebrow time everyone had the skinny brows not me I mean I wasn't plucking brows but like massively huge eyebrows that were a staple of her face and suddenly people look at her and like yeah you know what interesting we can make that work yeah if she does not come from you know does she come from like aristocracy something like that something like that if she doesn't have that background is she honestly finding herself in the pages of Iokun Who knows?

1:04:31Yeah. We'll never know. We're like, they're good for the beauty standard. Two phenomenally beautiful women. Yeah. But also like. I do think Cara Delevingne is absolutely stunning. I also just like, again, I know I mentioned her up top. Francesca Scorsese is a very interesting, because I think Francesca Scorsese does act, but I think what she's actually doing, it's like she's, if she's a Neppo baby, she's kind of putting it back into the company because she's like making Martin Scorsese sort of relevant and funny again to younger audiences. Every time I see videos of them, that's cute. She's so cute.

1:05:02Question, if your parent is super, super, super famous and super, super successful, do you think the pressure to live up to that is just a bit... Like Serena Williams, everyone thinks her daughter is going to be taking over the tennis world in 10 years' time, and that child has barely picked up a racket. That child. Might not even want to play tennis, who knows? Again, my heart does bleed, but if you're trying to be an actor and your dad is, I don't know, George Clooney or something. Well, I mean, that is what I do think is going on inside the darkened mind of Brooklyn Beckham. I think he's just like...

1:05:35I bless him, man. My dad's David Beckham, my mom's Victoria Beckham. It's really hard to excel at something. I don't know, sometimes I sort of pretend my way into his brain when I'm like, oh, it's like, how do you have an instinct for anything? You know when you see a child prodigy, as David Beckham was, and he just shows this strong inclination for something. His dad's driving him to practice every day. his parents really get behind it. But it's like a faff and he's made a decision when like all the hurdles are flattened. How do you decide what it is that you really want when everything looks the same amount of close and the same amount of far away?

1:06:12Yeah. Yeah. So are we about to feeling sorry if we're going to go away? I think we're being nuanced. I love, I love us. I love us. We've done really well at this. I think we've actually done really well. Look at us being balanced. I know. Yeah. I mean, I hope people don't think that our hearts are bleeding for the children of the very rich and famous but i do find them fascinating i find like i find the conversations we're not hearing about more fascinating and i think like the there is like a great book to be written about this like someone's gonna some great journalist maybe you is gonna write a great oral history of like all the nepos and like is gonna find and connect the trends and the various bits and pieces and i'll be there for it when they do stunning i simply couldn't be bothered but i will read you're just gonna make up nepo babies instead yeah yeah me making up nepo babies getting slashed up in a manor house that's very my vibe but yeah yeah i would read the book absolutely benjamin dean remind us what that book is called again the book is called bury your friends and it's my nepo baby slasher yes thanks ben thank you so much caroline

1:07:35We'll be right back.

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