Cooper Hoffman and Nico Parker Are Our New Nepo Baby Power Couple

We love love, and what could be more adorable than when two lovely and talented people find one another amid the madness of Hollywood and famous parents? Put away your cynicism for a moment, dammit!

Cooper Hoffman, fresh from the new Gregg Araki comedy I Want Your Sex, just revealed that he’s dating Nico Parker. The pair met while making Poetic License, a comedy directed by another nepo baby, Maude Apatow. Hoffman told The Hollywood Reporter, “But, we didn’t officially start dating until a few weeks after filming, when she came to New York to meet my mom, and I asked her to be my girlfriend. It was very sweet.”

That does sound really sweet! For those of you who don’t know, Cooper Hoffman is the son of the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Nico Parker, who you may recognise from The Last of Us, is the daughter of actress Thandiwe Newton and director Ol Parker. Cooper made his big-screen debut in Licorice Pizza, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, a frequent collaborator of his father’s. And he’s certainly proving himself in other films, like The Long Walk. He’s certainly got some big shoes to fill given that PSH was one of the finest actors of his generation and could do literally anything. Getting asked repeatedly about living up to his legacy and dealing with his tragic death must be a nightmare.

To Cooper’s credit, in this interview, he is warm, open, and very level-headed. He talks about his excitement in seeing the New York Knicks win the NBA Championship and going to games with his dad, and in how being the son of a celebrity impacted his views on fame. I remember, after Hoffman’s death, the way the paparazzi trailed Cooper and his mother, seemingly desperate to get pictures of a crying child. Going from famous by association to famous on your own terms is an odd journey, as Cooper admits.

“I thought I knew about fame,” he says. “I was surrounded by it for so long. I saw what my dad and his movies meant to the world. I saw the darker side, too, with people hiding behind trash cans to get a photo. Or the even darker side than that, which is you’re at his funeral and you walk out to 200 photographers. But people didn’t care about me, they cared about him. Then, I’m 17 years old and the movie comes out and it’s all on me. People want to take photos of me. They want to talk to me. But I don’t know what the fuck I think about things, I’m only 17 and I’ve done one single movie. Paul held my hand the whole way through. I didn’t know who I was as an actor or a person yet.”

I really wish him well. He’s got the goods and I can’t wait to see him get bigger roles to show it off. I do hope his mother stopped dating Louis C.K., though…