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Billie Eilish’s mother Maggie Baird has shut down claims that her daughter was a “nepo baby” after a resurfaced clip of Baird in a Friends episode did the rounds on social media.
In an interview with Glamour magazine that focused on the mothers of some of pop culture’s biggest stars, Baird dismissed the idea that her children musicians Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell became famous because both she and husband Patrick O’Connell were actors.
“I think it’s hilarious. Because that came out, and it was like, ‘Oh, Billie is a nepo baby.’ And I’m like, ‘Did you know that I got that episode of Friends because I was about to lose my health insurance?’” Baird said, referring to the clip that was posted on X in July, where she played a casting director for Matt LeBlanc’s character Joey Tribbiani in an episode on season six.
“My husband and I are working class actors. We eked out a meagre living, and it afforded us a lot of time with our kids, which was awesome. But the industry is primarily people like us or even people not even like us who couldn’t even do that. So when all of this happened to our kids, we’d never been on that side of it,” she said.
Baird explained that neither she nor O’Connell had ever reached the kind of fame or success their children had managed to achieve, but they were “happy” and “fulfilled” with their work.
“I think that people don’t really understand there’s a whole industry of people who are creative and they’re working and they’re struggling, and they make perfectly happy lives, and they feel creative, and they feel fulfilled. But that’s a very different life than on this side of the door where you’re suddenly playing in this different arena,” she said.
Baird is an experienced actor, voice artist, musician and screenwriter, who has appeared in projects including Curb Your Enthusiasm and Six Feet Under.
Finneas O’Connell has also responded previously to claims that insinuated that he and Eilish had it easier since their parents were in show business.
In 2020, O’Connell said: “During my life time, our parents were never able to fully financially support us off of their work as actors.
“Our dad worked 12 hour days 7 days a week as a construction worker for Mattel and our mom was a teacher. Our parents gave us love but knew no one in the record industry.
“Anyone who saw us tour in 2019 knows our dad insists on sweeping the stage each night before we perform,” he added.
Baird went on to talk about the close-knit and grounded family unit they’d managed to maintain, despite the success her children enjoyed.
“You’re just a family, and it’s all very normal, and then the world kind of puts everything else on it. You step onstage in front of 100,000 people, and that’s an hour and a half, and then the rest of the time you’re at the dinner table and your brother is giving you shit. The family part is the part that keeps it sane,” she said.
