Lily-Rose Depp Silent on Johnny Depp Drama, Slams Nepotism Claims

Lily-Rose Depp said in a new Elle magazine profile that she has avoided weighing in on the controversies surrounding her father, Johnny Depp, because she refuses to be defined by the men in her life. Johnny Depp spent several months this year in a court trail against Amber Heard, testimonies from which detailed his alleged abusive behavior toward Heard and his unprofessional behavior on film sets such as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise.

“When it’s something that’s so private and so personal that all of a sudden becomes not so personal … I feel really entitled to my secret garden of thoughts,” Lily-Rose Depp said about her silence on her father. “I also think that I’m not here to answer for anybody, and I feel like for a lot of my career, people have really wanted to define me by the men in my life, whether that’s my family members or my boyfriends, whatever.”

“I’m really ready to be defined for the things that I put out there,” she added.

Lily-Rose also addressed claims she’s a “nepo baby,” short for nepotism. She’s the daughter of Johnny Depp and French star Vanessa Paradise, and she’s been building an acting career since 2014 with credits that include “The King” opposite Timothee Chalamet. In 2017, she was nominated for most promising newcomer at France’s César Awards. However, that hasn’t stopped the internet from claiming Lily-Rose is only successful because of her famous parents.

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“I’m familiar,” she said about the accusations. “The internet seems to care a lot about that kind of stuff. People are going to have preconceived ideas about you or how you got there, and I can definitely say that nothing is going to get you the part except for being right for the part. The internet cares a lot more about who your family is than the people who are casting you in things. Maybe you get your foot in the door, but you still just have your foot in the door. There’s a lot of work that comes after that.”

Lily-Rose said she finds it “interesting” that “nepo baby” accusations are lobbied at women more then men in Hollywood, saying, “I just hear it a lot more about women, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence.” She also said such accusations don’t carry the same weight in other professions.

“It’s weird to me to reduce somebody to the idea that they’re only there because it’s a generational thing. It just doesn’t make any sense,” Lily-Rose said. “If somebody’s mom or dad is a doctor, and then the kid becomes a doctor, you’re not going to be like, ‘Well, you’re only a doctor because your parent is a doctor.’ It’s like, ‘No, I went to medical school and trained.’”

Lily-Rose is starring opposite The Weekend in HBO’s “The Idol,” which hails from “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson. The show won’t arrive until 2013, but it’s already one of HBO’s most anticipated new dramas.