A Nepo Baby Who Isn’t Afraid To Talk About Being a Nepo Baby

Zosia Mamet is known for her breakout role as Shoshanna in the millennial core HBO series Girls. She breaks down the show's lasting legacy, what her character would be up to today, and why younger generations are still connecting with the show. Plus, Zosia’s new book of essays, Does This Make Me Funny?, gets candid about being a self-described “B-minus nepo baby” and what it's like to work with badly behaved bosses in Hollywood (it sucks).

This week, I interviewed a nepo baby who isn’t afraid to talk about being a nepo baby. It was really refreshing.

Zosia Mamet, of GIRLS fame, stopped by the show to discuss her new essay collection, Does This Make Me Funny? The book is full of stories about growing up in the industry, navigating bad relationships, dealing with problematic colleagues, and ultimately, finding your way in spite of it all.

But I was most struck by how Zosia opened the book. In the foreword, she called herself a “B minus nepo baby at best.” This was her husband’s idea. After expressing to him all her anxiety about getting questions about her lineage upon the release of the book, he told her to just beat everyone to those questions. “He was like, ‘Just put it in the intro and then put it in the epilogue.’ Basically, every anxiety that I had about what someone would say about me, I tried to calm that anxiety by saying it about myself first in writing in black and white.”

It works. Zosia has a self-awareness I wish more people of privilege in the industry had. She’s also really funny with it. The story she told me in our chat of an audition — that turned out to just be a chance for the director to grill her about her famous father, David Mamet — is straight-up hilarious.

We’re living in a moment of heightened nepo-awareness. One could blame that 2022 New York Magazine cover story all about nepo babies. But honestly, it feels like they were just responding to a desire already existing in the culture. Zosia agreed. “When we were coming up in the industry, it wasn't a thing and it wasn't cool — it was a mark against us… And now it's like, cool to be a Nepo. I think so much of it is the parasocial nature [of modern life on the internet] — we just keep becoming more and more not in reality, but seemingly in each other's business. We broadcast everything. Things that used to not be known about are now just public knowledge.” Including a star’s lineage.

Listen for the nepo of it all, but stay for the GIRLS chatter. At this point in my career, a lot of you are probably well aware that HBO’s GIRLS is one of my favorite TV shows of all time. Zosia and I talk about the legacy of the show, why Gen Z and Gen Alpha seem to like it so much, even though it represents a world that in many ways no longer exists. And I break the news to Zosia that legendary rapper Nas was actually a big GIRLS fan in its heyday. (She really got a kick out of learning that information.)

When I asked Zosia what her character on GIRLS, Shoshana, would be up to now, she was ready. “I think she's probably either a second marriage or second divorce. I'm not sure which. She's for sure running a Fortune 500 company. Like, did she invent Spanx? She definitely has twins that she had through IVF, and maybe got her second divorce because she had an affair with her IVF doctor.”

“I have a feeling that she's entering a phase where she has everything that she wants, everything that she thought she wanted,” Zosia continued. “Everything that was on her mood board, she has achieved or acquired, but still, something isn't right. And so I think she's about to have her Under the Tuscan Sun moment. I [also] think that she’s about to have a lesbian tryst.”

Please write that GIRLS spinoff right now.

Alright, with that, have a happy weekend. AND — if you’re so inclined, lemme ask you a favor? I’m contemplating a BAD book club, where we all talk about a book that was, well, pretty horrible. I have one in mind. It’s the new one from Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. Her new book is titled All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation. There’s no nice way to put it. This book is awful, unethical, and doesn’t need to exist. It’s all about the last few months of Gilbert’s now deceased romantic partner, Rayya. Once Rayya is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she relapses into a very nasty drug habit, with Gilbert’s help. At one point, Gilbert is even buying her needles and contemplating murdering Rayya just to get it all over with. Yeah. This thing is AWFUL. Tone-deaf. Saccharine. And yet, I can’t put it down. Wanna read it with me? We’ll maybe talk about it on a future episode of the show. If that sounds like not your style at all, lemme recommend this instead. New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino’s take-down of the new Gilbert book. It’s perfect.

Alright, have a nice weekend! Maybe go watch a GIRLS rerun or two!

— Sam