Gracie Abrams says she “gets” why people call her a nepo baby
Abrams, who is the daughter of filmmaker J.J. Abrams, told The New York Times that she was aware of her “safety net.”
Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Last week, Gracie Abrams appeared on The New York Times’s PopCast to discuss music and privilege ahead of the release of her forthcoming album Daughter from Hell, out July 17. “The nepo stuff is obviously in the discourse appropriately,” she admitted. “I think about the privilege there, and it’s like, I had a safety net, and that allowed me the ability to experiment and to concentrate, and I had the gift of time to dedicate to doing this thing I loved. I wasn’t growing up afraid financially, and that’s the biggest deal.”
Abrams, whose father is movie director JJ Abrams and mother is production company executive Katie McGrath, continued, “The specific household that I was born into… there is just this vocabulary that I’m so lucky to grow up with. So like, when I see people pointing that out, it’s like, I get it, hard-core. The jokes and things, I understand the tone of the internet.”
But Abrams drew a line at comments she finds unnecessarily mean: “There are some days where I’m laughing just as hard as the person posting it, and there’s other times where, like, we’re all people. It’s like, that can’t feel good,” she said. “These days, there’s just abject cruelty floating, and when people decide to cash in on that, I worry for their hearts.”
In response to the viral “blocking Gracie Abrams” meme, however, she declared, “Go for it!” It’s a prescient time for Abrams to acknowledge her famous parentage: the singer explained on the podcast that Daughter from Hell is inspired in large part by her complicated relationship with her mother during childhood. “Adolescence is tough for the child and for the parent,” she explained. “I think my mom and I earned our relationship we have now, for sure. She’s like my favorite person… I call her six times a day.”
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