This just in:Allison Williams and Brian Williams are getting out on the town.
The Girlsactress and former NBC News anchor shared a rare joint outing together to attend the Falsettos revival 10-year anniversary concert in New York City on Nov. 2.
For the outing at Carnegie Hall, Allison, 38, and Brian, 67, were all smiles as they posed for photos together.
The Get Outactress—who shares son Arlo, 4, with husband Alexander Dreymon—donned a casual, yet chic ensemble, wearing a black turtleneck with jeans, while accessorizing her look with a brown belt, glasses and colorful beaded bracelets.
As for Brian—dad to Allison with wife Jane Gillan Stoddard—the former news anchor sported a mustard yellow jacket over a button-up, matching his daughter with light-washed denim jeans.
But Allison didn’t just spend some quality time with her dad during the musical.
After all, the M3GAN star also hung out with her Girls costarLena Dunham, who smiled for the camera alongside Allison and her dad.
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And though Allison shares a strong bond with her dad, she didn’t follow his footsteps into journalism. Still, she has acknowledged that she had a leg up in life thanks to her dad’s fame, describing her privilege as “thorough.”
“There’s no conversation about my career,” she told Wired in 2022, “without talking about the ways in which I have been fortunate.”
“I was definitely concerned with making sure people understood I was a hard worker,” she continued, “as if somehow that would absolve me of the privilege.”
While she’s aware of how her upbringing may have looked differently than others, the Regretting You actress only looks back on it fondly.
“We had the best childhood,” Allison told her dad while appearing on his Netflix series We’re Back! With Brian Williams in June. “You were extraordinarily busy when I was growing up, and yet none of the sense memory I have of childhood is you not being there, which is really impressive because you had work hours that meant you weren’t there for dinner.”
Ultimately, the Fellow Travelers actress feels “lucky” for how she and her brother Doug Williams were raised.
“When the topic of nepo babies and privilege comes up, I always start there,” she explained. “I always start at the fact that I felt totally loved and secure in my family unit growing up, and how that just sets you up on a totally different path in life.”
As Allison put it, “I felt like I had cheat codes in a way
To see what more stars had to say about the nepotism conversation, keep reading…
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“I had a safety net and that allowed me the ability to experiment and to concentrate and I had the gift of time to dedicate to doing this thing I loved,” she explained in a 2026 interview with the New York Times’ Popcast. “I wasn’t growing up afraid financially and that’s the biggest deal.”
Gracie continued, “And then the specific household that I was born into, there is just this vocabulary that I’m so lucky to grow up with. So like, when I see people pointing that out, it’s like, I get it hardcore.”
Calling the issue “lame,” the Fifty Shades of Grey star added, “So the opportunity to make fun of it, I jumped at”—referring to an SNL sketch poking fun at the controversy that she took part the previous month while hosting the show.
“A lot of people think that,” the Scream 4 actress, then 20, told PopEater in 2011, “and they talk about nepotism which I think is so ridiculous considering it’s obviously not true—because I’ve auditioned for so many things and never gotten the part. Also it’s like, you know, maybe someone can get you one part, but they can’t really get you 10 parts.”
“I don’t really care,” Kate, who was also raised by Goldie’s longtime partner Kurt Russell, told The Independent in December 2022. “I look at my kids and we’re a storytelling family. It’s definitely in our blood. People can call it whatever they want, but it’s not going to change it.”
The mom to sons Ryder and Bingham (with Chris Robinson and Matthew Bellamy, respectively) and daughter Rani (with current partner Danny Fujikawa) explained, “I actually think there are other industries where it’s [more common]. Maybe modeling? I see it in business way more than I see it in Hollywood. Sometimes I’ve been in business meetings where I’m like, ‘Wait, whose child is this? Like, this person knows nothing!'”
Ultimately, she added, “If you work hard and you kill it, it doesn’t matter.”
But when it came to making movies, the Bottoms actress said, “No artist is going to sacrifice their vision for someone’s kid. That just isn’t how art is made, and what I’m interested in is art.”
Moreover, she added, “No one wants to work with someone who’s annoying, and not easy to work with, and not kind. Yes, nepotism is prevalent, but I think if it actually was what people make it out to be, we’d see even more of it.”
“I guess I understood what nepotism was like inherently as a 10-year-old,” Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s little sister, who once considered using Elizabeth Chase as her professional name, told Glamour UK in 2021. “I don’t know if I knew the word, but there is some sort of association of not earning something that I think bothered me at a very young age. It had to do with my own insecurities, but I was 10.”
Responding to a nepotism dig at Hopper (Sean’s son) Penn, who had been cast in a short film being directed by Destry (Steven’s daughter) Spielberg and written by Owen (Stephen’s son) King, Stiller tweeted in 2021, “Just speaking from experience, and I don’t know any of them, I would bet they all have faced challenges. Different than those with no access to the industry. Show biz as we all know is pretty rough, and ultimately is a meritocracy.”
Agreeing during the exchange that Hollywood wasn’t a fair playing field for a number of reasons, the Meet the Parents star clarified, “I’m saying that untalented people don’t really last if they get a break because of who they are or know or are related to.”
Though he got his two cents in early, the trending topic still came for Ben in February 2023 when Steve Martin called him a “nepo baby” in a teaser for their respective Pepsi Super Bowl commercials.
“They’re going to call you a nepo baby,” he recounted to Us Weekly the advice he gave. “It’s coming. The nepo baby is coming.”
He added, “You have to work for this. There’s no shortcuts. It’s going to be even harder for you!”
But he is, of course, willing to help out his daughters.
“I can sit down with my daughter who’s auditioning for a high school play at a diner, and I can say, ‘This is how you should say this line. This is how you should say this line. This is how you should say this line,’” he shared. “And it’s the only thing that I can impart on my children.”
Regarding the kerfuffle over her brother starring in a Spielberg-daughter-directed short, Dylan stressed, “This is the business. It is about who you know. Always. Whether you’re the son of Sean Penn or not.”
Hopper, who made his movie debut in Sean’s film The Last Face, told E! News in February that the nepo baby conversation didn’t really affect him.
“I’m like, ‘If you like it, cool. If you don’t, great,'” he explained, having just made Devil’s Peak with mom Robin Wright. “And if you think that there’s nepotism going on, I really don’t care because I’m gonna do the work just as professional as everybody else, and I’m not gonna come there and do it half-ass because I’m working with my dad, I’m working with my mom.'”
Working with his father, Hopper noted, was the same “great nightmare” for him as it was for all the other actors who weren’t related to the director.
And on any project, he added, “if I messed up on the film the first day, I’d be fired just like everyone else. Or, if I was terrible, I’ll be terrible. And I have been terrible.”
“That was hard,” Zoë continued. “But I was incredibly privileged. I got an agent easily. I’m not going to pretend like it didn’t help me get into the room. But I had to remember that I work hard, and as a child, I was putting on performances in my grandparents’ house. And it had nothing to do with who my family was. It was because I loved it.”
After the subject blew up, the actress told GQ months later it was “completely normal for people to be in the family business.” Furthermore, she added, “It’s literally where last names came from. You were a blacksmith if your family was, like, the Black family.”
Fair enough, but The Idol star’s comment on the resurgent hot topic promptly launched a thousand other comments.
“I’m so careful about these conversations now,” Lily-Rose told i-D a few months later. “I feel like my parents did the best job that they possibly could at giving me the most ‘normal childhood’ that they could. And obviously, that still was not a normal childhood. I’m super aware of the fact that my childhood did not look like everybody’s.”
“I wouldn’t be where I am, I wouldn’t have gotten where I am and been able to do what I can do if it weren’t for my parents, and I think really where you go wrong is denying that,” Ireland said in a November 2022 TikTok.
She got that “either you’re talented, either you’re capable or you’re not.” But “things could be a lot more simple and understandable and relatable if you just are honest about what you have and why you have what you have.”
Bruce opened the door, directing Gwyneth in the 1989 TV movie High, her acting debut, and Steven Spielberg sprinkled pixie dust on it, casting his 14-year-old goddaughter in the 1991 Peter Pan fantasy Hook.
And that was before the debate was raging. “Now there’s this whole ‘nepo baby’ culture and judgment that exists around kids of famous people,” Gwyneth told Bustle in October 2023, calling the term “kind of an ugly moniker.”
“When his pals at school call him nepo baby, he gets so sad,” he told Vulture. “He doesn’t have any friends at school. He gets isolated. Cruel kids—or cruel and ignorant. They love it on the internet.”
“But it is such a bulls–t thing,” Stellan continued, “because nobody would hire you, at least not for anything good, if you’re not good enough.”
“When I was 10, we moved to the East Coast, and suddenly I realized, because of how I was treated, that there was something special about me,” Jane told Harvard Business Review in 2018. “It made me a little self-conscious. Some people wanted to be my friend because my father was Henry Fonda; some people didn’t like me because my father was Henry Fonda. There was both good and bad.”
“When I became an actress,” the two-time Oscar winner continued, “the fact that my father was a movie star was an advantage—no question—because people paid more attention to me than they would have if I were just another actress. Also, internally, I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t getting parts because I was Henry Fonda’s daughter, so I worked harder. Instead of taking one class a week, I would take four, so no one could say I was a dilettante.”
Naturally, Bryce continued, “insecurities can creep up or you’ll hear somebody say, like, ‘Oh, she only got that because of X, Y, or Z.’ But that’s very small.”
Maya, who plays writer Flannery O’Connor in the film, said, “I had moments of insecurity about it while we were shooting the movie. But the internet doesn’t have a lot of nuances. My dad has been a massive teacher for me, and we want to work together. We like being with each other.”
The 25-year-old had previously noted that she could only go so far as her parents’ kid. “I think I’ll get a couple chances on their name and then if I suck, I’ll get kicked out of the kingdom,” Maya told People in 2021. “And that’s what should happen. So I’m just going to try not to suck.”
“My parents were actors and I married an actor,” Jamie Lee, whose husband is Christopher Guest, said while accepting her SAG Award in February 2023. “I know you’ll look at me and think, ‘Well, nepo baby. That’s why she’s there’— and I totally get it. But the truth of the matter is, I’m 64 years old and this is just amazing.”
The 46-year-old, whose first movie role was “Male Page” in his dad’s 1996 directorial debut That Thing You Do!, said on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend in October 2022 that he does “credit the old man” for advising him to only go into acting if he really wanted to.
Tom advised him, “‘If you don’t really want this, then come up with something else, ’cause you will be miserable.'”
Arturo Holmes/WireImage
But while being screen legend John Barrymore’s granddaughter carried some weight, the Never Been Kissed star put it this way on her talk show in January 2023: “If you came from a family of lawyers, and someone said, ‘Oh, well, her dad runs the firm,’ it’s like, ‘Well, she still took the bar and got here of her own volition.’ So as long as we’re not catty about it and celebratory of it, that’s the tone I want.”
“It’s just a fact,” Leni, 19, told People in October 2022. “My parents are famous. I did get help starting off, and I know that people would dream to start off with what I had…But I am doing the work and putting in the time. Now I’m working on my own, traveling alone, going to school. My mom and I just have the same love for the same thing.”
“A lot of people [in similar situations] have proven themselves over the years, so I’ve got to keep going and make good work,” the Euphoria star told Net-a-Porter for a September 2022 article. “It’s so early in my career, I don’t have much to show yet, but hopefully one day I’ll be really proud of the stuff I’ve done by myself.”
In response to the inevitable backlash reminding the singer—whose parents are actor Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen—that TikTok was focusing on entertainment nepo babies, thankyouverymuch, Lily acknowledged that was a valid conversation, too.
“It is quite clear that there is a severe lack of representation in the industry where class and race are concerned,” she wrote on X, then known as Twitter. “Everyone loses as a result…I do feel that nepo babies are being somewhat scapegoated here though, there is a wider, societal conversation to be had about wealth inequality, about lack of programs and funding.”
“To my fellow ‘Nepo babies’—just acknowledge your privilege, the opportunities your last name has gotten you and move on,” she offered on Instagram Stories in December 2022. “At some point talent and grit comes into play but let’s stop acting like this is in anyway a rational burden that people know who [our] parents are—you sound like a–holes.”
Though she did.
“It was more so to be like, ‘This is what everyone is saying and I want you to know that this is my way of responding to it,'” Hailey said in June, explaining her purposely “overly literal” message on The Circuit With Emily Chang. Indisputably a nepo baby, the Rhode Skin founder said, “I embrace that I am.”
Meg added, “That nepo stuff is so dismissive of his work ethic, his gifts, and how sensitive he is to the idea of his privilege.”
“I knew that people would constantly say, ‘Oh, I know how he got that job,'” The Boys star told Thrillist in 2022. “And they’re still going to say that. It’s fine. But as long as I knew how I got there, that would be enough.”
Now 31, Jack decided long ago there was no point trying to hide his parentage.
“It’s not that I want to escape from it,” he said on Allegedly with Matthew Cole Weiss in 2016. “I’m a huge fan of both of their work.” Noting that he wasn’t allowed to start auditioning until he was 18, Jack added, “If I had just parents that weren’t actors, I would still be over the moon to have this job.”
