Maya Rudolph Puts the Nepo Baby Debate to Rest: 'Bitch, Have You Seen My Work?'

Another child of a record producer turned comedy star, Maya Rudolph gave the best answer to the recent nepo baby debate that I for one am ready to be done with. In a recent interview with The New Yorker, she talked about how SNL has changed since her tenure and how her career has changed over the years, which inevitably brought up her upbringing and how much art and music played a role in how her father, musician and producer Richard Rudolph, raised her:

“There was some bullsh**,” she said, and I sat up straighter in my chair, “Somebody asked me about being a nepo baby, and I was like, Are you seriously coming for me?” Firmly seated, posture erect, give it to me, Maya.

“What planet do you have to be on to think that I’m not aware that I was raised in a show-business family? I would have to be brain-dead not to notice that. All the things our families do influence who we are. If my dad had been a lawyer, that would have influenced me. There’s this concept that nepo babies are people who got the job because their dad’s good at something. And I just think, Bitch, have you seen my work?”

With one fell swoop, the nepo baby conversation has been laid to rest. Six feet under. Dirt on the coffin. Mourners returning to their cars. Because, seriously, have you seen her work? No one can debate that.

And don’t be coming for her children when they grow up and contemplate going into show business, by the way, because as she sees it, “It’s all in the soup. Whatever I’m doing and whatever my husband is doing are spilling onto my children. It’s just a matter of what they do with that.” She added:

“I don’t remember who said this, but I always think about this when I think about my parents doing music and me doing comedy: square people make round babies. I don’t think that it was necessarily a rebellious act for me to go into comedy. I think it all came from the same place. It was just my version of it. And what I soon realized in doing it is that a lot of it was musical. It’s my first language in a lot of ways.”

Listen to Maya Rudolph: let the work speak for itself.