Billie Eilish’s Mom Maggie Baird Shuts Down ‘Nepo Baby’ Comments: ‘People Don’t Really Understand’

Some people think Billie Eilish is a “nepo baby.” Her mom, Maggie Baird, disagrees.

In a new interview with Glamour for this year’s Women of the Year issue centered on four moms of superstars, Baird responded to claims that her Grammy-winning daughter benefitted from nepotism because she worked as an actress in Los Angeles for many years.

The conversation was sparked by a mention of Baird’s appearance on a 1999 episode of Friends, which recently went viral online. For the episode, she played a casting director working with Matt LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani on an audition he needs to secure to keep his health insurance.

“I think it’s hilarious. Because that came out, and it was like, ‘Oh, Billie is a nepo baby,'” she told the outlet. “And I’m like, ‘Did you know that I got that episode of Friends because I was about to lose my health insurance?'”

Baird, who’s also mother to musician Finneas O’Connell, explained that she and husband Patrick O’Connell “are working class actors.”

“We eked out a meager living, and it afforded us a lot of time with our kids, which was awesome,” she recalled. “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.”

While Baird’s film and television career was active from the 1980s through 2010s, and she appeared on shows including Curb Your Enthusiasm, The X-Files, The West Wing and Charmed, among others, the bulk of her onscreen roles were not lead characters.

“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 told Glamour. “But that’s a very different life than on this side of the door where you’re suddenly playing in this different arena.”

Elsewhere in the story, Baird recalled creating her 2013 independent film, Life Inside Out, in which she co-starred alongside Finneas — and she spoke about why it was a special accomplishment.

“In 2012, I decided to make a movie. I wrote the movie with a friend, and I did a Kickstarter for the money. And the reason I did it was because I wanted to show my kids that you could make something happen,” she said. “You don’t have to wait for somebody to say yes to you. You can just make it happen.”

Baird added, “That probably had nothing to do with what happened because that success was all them. But I do think it’s important. I think it’s important that as you are hoping your children go much farther than you, you still have your own life. You can still do; you can create. It’s equally important.”