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'He Was Right': Rashida Jones Reveals Advice Dad Quincy Jones Gave Her About Being A Nepo-Baby
Rashida Jones reflects on 'practical' advice her father, Quincy Jones gave her about nepo baby advantages.
While Rashida Jones who is known for her roles as Ann Perkins in Parks and Recreation and in Celeste & Jesse Forever, is often referred to as a 'nepo baby.' As the daughter of music producer Quincy Jones and actress-model Peggy Lipton, Jones had a significant advantage when entering the industry. In an interview while promoting her new series, Sunny, Jones reflected on what it was like growing up with famous parents and how their experiences shaped her own.
Rashida Jones reveals her father's advice about being a nepo baby
Rashida Jones opened up to InStyle about her journey into the entertainment industry. While acknowledging that her mom, Peggy Lipton, is an actress and model and her dad, Quincy Jones, is a record producer, Jones said she didn’t grow up aiming to be famous.
“I had parents who were in the public eye, but they were extremely protective of us,” she explained. “[Fame] wasn't that much a part of my reality.” Now that she understands what it means to be a celebrity, Jones said fame is pretty poisonous. She added that she is glad she wasn’t raised surrounded by it because now it is not her favorite thing in the world.
Jones went to Harvard for college, graduating with a degree in Comparative Study of Religion, so she didn’t intend to be a nepo baby. “People like the story of a legacy family and it's fun to write about and it's fun to think about you know, the ‘mini me’ and the person who looks like their mom or their dad,” she explained. “And then there's the resentment there too. But I think about it as, historically, people go into the family business more than they don't.”
Jones expressed gratitude for the support her parents provided as she navigated her career path. “My dad said to me, when I graduated from college, ‘You're gonna go wait in line with 70,000 other people for a job? That doesn't seem really that practical,’” Jones remembered. “And he was right.”
After graduating in 1997, Jones said she worked in entertainment but her big break wasn’t until 2005 when she landed a role on The Office. It was then that she got a true taste of fame.
Rashida Jones on channeling grief in Sunny
Rashida Jones stars in the new Apple TV+ dark sci-fi dramedy Sunny, where she plays opposite a robot named Sunny. The robot has a "Hey girl!" pep that Jones' misanthropic character Suzie can't tolerate. She works in two languages as the tech-thriller mystery of Sunny's genesis unfolds in Kyoto. And the home bot appears as a consolation gift after Suzie's family's disappearance in an aviation incident.
In an interview with Time Magazine, Jones was asked what grief was she hoping to explore in the story. "When you grieve, there is this sense that there’s so much left unsaid. There’s regret and confusion, this lens looking backwards at your entire relationship. Even if it's not your husband who you're concerned might be involved in some dark sh-t", Jones said.
She continued, "There is something that felt really visceral and true to me, because I lost my mom a couple years ago, and it was the most complex emotional experience I’ve ever had. I had a baby, and then seven months later, my mom passed away. I had this combination that's like in the show, of this intense love of family, and then the shock of the reality that your life has changed so much. There’s the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, but it’s not cyclical. It’s not linear. It’s just chaotic."
The story of Sunny follows a woman living in Kyoto whose husband and son vanished in a plane crash and is given/gifted a domestic robot from her husband's robotics company. Sunny was released on Apple TV+ on July 10, 2024.
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