The White Lotus season three continues to make headlines, with its star-studded cast from Aimee Lou Wood to Carrie Coon taking centre stage this summer.
It is season three stars Sam Nivola and Patrick Schwarzenegger that have undoubtedly got the world talking the most however, with the pair caught up in the ‘nepo baby’ debate.
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Nivola, 21, is the son of actors Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer, and Schwarzenegger, 31, is the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver.
And with the two actors coming from major Hollywood families, they have been subjected to the ‘nepo baby’ label. In fact, some have even questioned if it was their powerful family connections that secured them their roles in The White Lotus.
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Sam Nivola weighed in on the subject this week, defending his casting in a recent interview with Variety.
“Other than my genes, I don’t think I can attribute much of my success to my parents,” Nivola explained to the publication. “I feel proud that I’ve done it for myself, and sometimes in spite of them.
“I didn’t get my dad’s agent to call up so-and-so, I did it by myself,” Nivola recalled of his first acting job. “I didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to be able to say that anything I’ve achieved has been because of anyone other than me. And I’m proud of that.”
(Image credit: © Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO® and all related programs are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.)
Schwarzenegger has also opened up about the ‘nepo baby’ debate in an interview with The Sunday Times earlier this year.
“I know there are people who’ll say I only got this role because of who my dad is,” he explained. “They’re not seeing that I’ve had 10 years of acting classes, put on school plays every week, worked on my characters for hours on end or the hundreds of rejected auditions I’ve been on.”
He continued: “Of course, it’s frustrating and you can get boxed in and you think at that moment, I wish I didn’t have my last name. But that’s a small moment.”
Well, that’s that.