Gracie Abrams Responds To The Nepo Baby Discourse

Gracie Abrams isn’t offended by the nepo baby conversation. The “Hit the Wall” singer responded to the online discourse during a June 25 appearance on The New York Times’ Popcast. In the interview, Abrams opened up about growing up with famous parents and how they affected her career in music.

Abrams — whose parents, J.J. Abrams and Katie McGrath, are big names in the film industry (her dad directed Star Trek and the Star Wars sequels) — seems to welcome dialogue about nepotism and privilege. “The nepo stuff is obviously in the discourse, appropriately,” Abrams said on the podcast. “I think about the privilege there, and it’s like, I had a safety net, and that allowed me the ability to experiment, and 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.”

Although her parents are not musicians, they still had deep ties to the entertainment space. “The specific household that I was born into, with my parents both having worked in the entertainment industry for as long as I’ve been alive,” she continued. “Like the way that you overhear your family talking about anything, like at the dinner table or in the car on the way to school, there is just this vocabulary that I was so lucky to grow up with.”

Apparently, Abrams does not mind when people bring up her family connections. “When I see people pointing that out, it’s like: I get it, hardcore,” she said. “The jokes and things, I also understand. I’m like, ‘Go crazy.'”

However, sometimes the internet gets to be a little too much. “It is funny when it overwhelms the things you actually want to see [online],” she added. “Because my name is my name, your algorithm is just naturally being like — you’re being like force fed. And 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. That can’t feel good.”