Ireland Baldwin acknowledged her privilege in Hollywood after Lily-Rose Depp publicly denied being the daughter of johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis favorably steered her acting and modeling career.
Baldwin–who is the daughter of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger–weighed in with her genuine thoughts about nepotism in a series of TikTok videos.
Depp has had success as a model after appearing on magazine covers and becoming a longtime ambassador for Chanel, just like her mother.
The 23-year-old also had several roles in movies like Netflix's The King—in which she starred alongside her ex-boyfriend Timothée Chalamet.
Depp recently landed in hot water after defending herself from the accusation roles were handed to her because she was a "nepo baby."
The term is derived from the phrase "nepotism baby"–which refers to children of celebrity parents whose thriving careers are often attributed to their connections to various aspects of the entertainment industry and therefore didn't have to work as hard as people without those connections.
Depp rejected nepotism as a factor in her career and commented in an Elle interview:
“The internet seems to care a lot about that kind of stuff."
“People are going to have preconceived ideas about you or how you got there, and I can definitely say that nothing is going to get you the part except for being right for the part."
She added the term "nepo baby" had sexist undertones.
“I just hear it a lot more about women, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence."
“It’s weird to me to reduce somebody to the idea that they’re only there because it’s a generational thing. It just doesn’t make any sense,
Baldwin on the other hand had a different take on the subject.
"As someone who comes from a famous family who pursued modeling, I want to share something."
You can see Baldwin's video here:
She continued:
"First of all, I think Lily-Rose Depp is very beautiful."
"I think she is very capable of being a model and she's proven herself in a lot of ways."
Baldwin noted Depp is a little on the shorter side for a model, adding taller female models are often hired for modeling work.
The Hollywood scion also said she and her mother–who came from nothing and worked hard to eventually become an Academy Award-winning actress and model–accompanied her to see various modeling agencies when she was younger.
"Let me just give you some real honesty or insight here, okay?"
"They're not there to see me," she said of casting agents.
"They're there to see my mother. Most of the time. They're just in awe of my mother's presence at those agencies taking me to those meetings."
While she was caught up in the excitement of being seen by those agencies at the time, Baldwin said she lost sight of the real motives behind the agencies expressing interest in seeing her.
People concurred with Baldwin's perspective.
@irelandshmireland/TikTok
@irelandshmireland/TikTok
In a follow-up video, Baldwin asserted she was not defending anybody but was only stating her personal perspective.
She noticed how modeling agents treated her was different from how they treated other models who had flown from all over the world and stayed in claustrophobic "model hotels" with roommates–an experience in contrast to her being put up in hotel suites.
She acknowledged:
“I wouldn’t be where I am, I wouldn’t have gotten where I am and been able to do what I can do if it weren’t for my parents."
“I think really where you go wrong is denying that.”
Baldwin addressed the backlash Depp experienced for her comments about nepotism and said her statements likely came from a defensive place.
“You get a place where you get really tired of answering questions about your parents because you so desperately want to be someone separate from all of that, especially when you choose a career that is in the public eye."
She continued in another video post:
"No matter how beautiful you are, no matter how fashionable you are, a lot of the time it's about the family where you came from."
"After a while, if you don't wake up and realize, 'this is so not about me'. This is like, 'I'm not an individual person right now'."
@irelandshmireland/TikTok
@irelandshmireland/TikTok
@irelandshmireland/TikTok
She came to this realization when she went to Italy for an event and instead of taking interest in her, the press asked Baldwin questions about her mother, which prompted her to wonder:
"'Do you want me to call her and put her on speaker?' "
Her stream-of-consciousness musings continued in a couple more videos.
@irelandshmireland/TikTok
@irelandshmireland/TikTok
Having known only the life she lived as a daughter of celebrities and pining for something other than a life in Hollywood where being a model was not a personal passion, Baldwin said she left Los Angeles for a low-profile life in Oregon.
She emphasized the importance of self-worth in the comments section, writing:
"I feel like you just have to be enough for yourself! You should surround yourself around people who make you feel good and not wait on strangers to validate you."
"There's so many things outside of my bubble," she said of leaving "superficial" LA.
"It took leaving it all to do something else and finding different challenges and making new friends and having a new perspective, which not everybody will experience that."
"But it definitely helped me learn about myself."
@jaketapoer/Bluesky
@BillAckman/Twitter