Maya Rudolph weighs in on 'nepo baby' debate saying her famous parents didn't help her career
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: Jerod Harris/Getty Images, Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images
Maya Rudolph has spoken out about her famous parents.
I'm not sure about you, but I wasn't actually aware that the Bridesmaids star's parents were famous - but others may know of her father, American songwriter and musician, Richard Rudolph.
Meanwhile, Rudolph's mother, Minnie Riperton, was also a famous singer.
Sadly, she passed away at the age of 31 from breast cancer when the comic was just seven years old.
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Riperton was best known for her 1975 single 'Lovin' You'.
Many who have well-known parents have been accused of using their fame as leverage for their own careers.
However, Loot and Grown Ups actress Rudolph insists that this isn't the case when it came to her own success.
Speaking on Dax Shepherd's Armchair Expert podcast, the 51-year-old comic said of her parents' careers: "They were musicians. They weren't actors. My trajectory was, I wanted to go to New York, and I wanted to be on Saturday Night Live."
She made her SNL debut in 2000.
Rudolph continued to say: "I understand that drive to be somewhere else - forage in a new city and create my own path. But that’s a huge undertaking.
"I wasn’t like, 'Oh my dad writes songs, that’s gonna make me a comedian.' "There was no direct line. I knew I had to get there myself."
She did have a little bit of help from her former high school classmate Jack Black, however.
Black is two years Rudolph's senior, and the pair ended up meeting in through their love of drama.
"He was two years older than me, and he transferred in the 10th grade, and I was in 8th," she recalled to Drew Barrymore earlier this month.
"My drama teacher put us together, and he was my improv coach for an improv competition we did, and he got me into the improv class, and he took me to my first Groundlings show, which is where I ended up."
The Groundlings is an LA-based improv school.
Other famous Groundlings alumni include Will Ferrell, Jennifer Coolidge, Kathy Griffin, Lisa Kudrow and Rudolph's Bridesmaids co-star, Melissa McCarthy.
Rudolph is now an award-winning comic and actress.
Last year, she bagged a Primetime Emmy for her voice-over in Big Mouth and she won another Emmy for the same sitcom two years prior.
Elsewhere, Rudolph has been nominated for a SAG and three Satellite Awards over the course of her career.