Hopper Penn Says He’s Not A “Nepo Baby” & Doesn’t Care If People Think He Is https://t.co/6nkzI98d0V
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) February 26, 2023
Hopper Penn, son of Sean Penn, is acting opposite of his mom, Robin Wright, in the film Devil’s Peak. When asked whether he’s concerned about being tagged with the ‘nepo baby’ label, he says: “I don’t give a shit about that, because I’m not one.”
The actor also commented about 2022 short film Let Me Go the Right Way, directed by Destry Allyn Spielberg, daughter of Steven Spielberg, and written by Owen King, son of Stephen King. “It came up when we were shooting,” Penn shared. “Destry had shown me an article calling it a ‘nepotism film’ and I just laughed about it. I was like, ‘They’re just pissed that they’re not in the movie!’ And then Ben Stiller backed us up, and he also comes from an actor family. So I really don’t care — I’m never going to see those people.”
But Hopper doesn’t stop there, oh no.
Earlier this month, he told E! News about nepotism, “Honestly it doesn’t affect me.”
“I’m like, ‘If you like it, cool. If you don’t, great. And if you think that there’s nepotism going on, I really don’t care because I’m gonna do the work just as professional as everybody else, and I’m not gonna come there and do it half-ass because I’m working with my dad, I’m working with my mom.'”
Hopper admitted that he didn’t have to audition for his first film, 2016’s The Last Face, which was directed by his father. “That can be a form of it, but I wasn’t treated any differently,” he explained, before joking that his dad was “the same nightmare to work with that everybody had to work with,” but added, “a great nightmare.”
“Nepotism is the wrong word for what this is,” he somehow continued.
“This is just a business that, luckily, for me, and not like a lot of actors, it was able to kind of just fall into my lap,” he noted. “I was given the opportunity with almost no preparation. I’m very lucky to have that, but I don’t think it’s nepotism. I mean, if I messed up on the film the first day, I’d be fired just like everyone else. Or, if I was terrible, I’ll be terrible. And I have been terrible.”
