Kate Hudson's Response To Nepo Baby Criticism Totally Backfires

A Vulture feature about "nepo babies" started a conversation about the family ties that might give some stars a leg up in Hollywood, and many of its subjects felt the need to speak up. On Instagram, "Knives Out" star Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, complained that the discussion surrounding the privileged offspring of the rich and famous was mostly about disparaging them and diminishing their work. 

Another star mentioned in the article was Kate Hudson, who appeared in the "Knives Out" sequel "Glass Onion." Hudson's parents are Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Russell once told Metro that Hudson was able to do what many struggling young actors would find infuriating: She rejected the first part ever offered to her. According to Russell, "Escape from L.A.," director John Carpenter also wanted then-17-year-old Hudson to act alongside her adopted dad in the film. "She read it and she was great. She was right for it. But then after discussing it more, she decided maybe that was not the way to begin — in a movie I was starring in," he said.

In an appearance on "Hot Ones," Hudson credited her mom with helping her hone her acting skills when she was a teen, explaining that Hawn got her an apprenticeship at the Williamstown Theatre Festival that stoked her passion for her craft. However, Hudson insists that her success isn't directly unrelated to her parents' celebrity status.

Hudson opened up to The Independent about her family and her career in December 2022. She claimed she used to avoid being linked to her parents, saying, "When I was starting out, if anybody asked me about them, I'd always try and change the subject." But now a mother herself, Hudson looks at her so-called "nepo baby" status differently. She told the Independent, "I look at my kids and we're a storytelling family. It's definitely in our blood." She closed her defense with a can-do platitude: "I don't care where you come from, or what your relationship to the business is — if you work hard and you kill it, it doesn't matter," she said.

Sounds nice, but Twitter users were unimpressed with Hudson's unwillingness to admit that she has so much more going for her than a strong work ethic. "If that were really the only criteria, there sure are a LOT of people who busted their a**es of WAY more than her, yet never got the advantages she doesn't even realize she had," one person wrote. "It's wild how hard it is for people with privilege to acknowledge that their privilege exists," another chimed in. "We're not saying you don't have talent or that you don't work hard, Kate Hudson. We're saying you had connections and opportunities that other people don't."