Billie Eilish started dominating the music industry at an extremely young age, but her mother insists that it’s not because her daughter’s a “nepo baby.”
Billie’s mom, Maggie Baird, is one of Glamour‘s Mothers of the Year, along with Beyonce‘s mom, Tina Knowles; Selena Gomez‘s mom, Mandy Teefy; and Travis and Jason Kelce‘s mom, Donna Kelce. In the article, Baird, a working actress, is asked about a clip of her appearance on an episode of Friends going viral earlier this year.
“I think it’s hilarious,” says Baird. “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?’”
She explains, “My husband [Patrick O’Connell] and I are working class actors. We eked out a meager 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.”
“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,” she adds.
As the mother of not one but two award-winning musicians, Baird adds, “The family part is the part that keeps it sane.” She notes, “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 s***.”
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