Billie Eilish’s mom shuts down ‘nepo baby’ claims: ‘My husband and I are working class actors’

nypost.com:

Billie Eilish was made for Grammy and Oscar-winning glory.But don’t get it twisted — it’s not because she was a nepo baby.That was the claim that the internet was making after a clip recently went viral of Eilish’s mother, Maggie Baird, appearing in a 1999 episode of “Friends.” But Mama Maggie rejects that notion.“I think it’s hilarious,” Baird, 65, told Glamour in a cover story for their new “Women of the Year: The Moms” issue also featuring the mothers of Beyoncé (Tina Knowles), Selena Gomez (Mandy Teefey), and Travis and Jason Kelce (Donna Kelce).“Because that came out, and it was like, ‘Oh, Billie is a nepo baby.’ And I’m like, ‘Did you know that I got that episode of ‘Friends’ because I was about to lose my health insurance?’ ”Baird had already acted in the soap operas “Another World” and “As the World Turns” as well as other TV series such as “L.A.

Law,” “Picket Fences” and “Chicago Hope” before she got cast in the Season 6 episode of “Friends” titled “The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance.”But despite sharing screen time with Matt LeBlanc, Baird notes that she was hardly on the same level as the “Friends” stars.“My husband and I are working class actors,” she said of Patrick O’Connell, father of Eilish and her producer/co-writer Finneas. “We eked out a meager living, and it afforded us a lot of time with our kids, which was awesome.“But the industry is primarily people like us or even people not even like us who couldn’t even do that,” she continued. “So when all of this happened to our kids, we’d never been on that side of it.“I think that people don’t really understand there’s a whole industry of people who are creative and they’re working and they’re struggling, and they make perfectly happy lives, and they.