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The Girls of Girls vs. The Fans
Despite generally positive critical reviews, the cast of HBO's new comedy Girls -- a sort of Sex and the City meets Less Than Zero produced by Judd Apatow -- fans are shouting nepotism! It wasn't long after the series premiere that viewers and writers alike figured out that all four members of the main cast are the daughters of relatively famous parents. Lena Dunham's mother is renowned artist Laurie Collins; Zosia Mamet is the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet; sexy Brit Jemima Kirke's dad was the drummer for the English rock group Bad Company; and Allison Williams (who plays Type A best friend to Dunham's wayward Hannah) is the child of none other than NBC news anchor Brian Williams.
Sure, sure, viewers are lashing out. Sometimes in good humor, sometimes not. And the titular girls' counter-reactions have been fittingly diverse: Kirke with the terse assertion that her parents "were not famous enough for it to affect my childhood one way or the other," while Dunham remaining unapologetic, having historically welcomed her mother into her art (casting her in her 2010 film Tiny Furniture as -- you guessed it -- her character's mother). And maybe there's something off-putting about the astronomical rises to fame the privileged few with family ties to Hollywood tend to have. But if we were to blacklist everyone in showbiz who got where they are with a little nepotism, we'd be saying goodbye to the likes of Ewan McGregor, Mariska Hargitay, Rachel Bilson, Miley Cyrus, Rosamund Pike, Jared Harris, Daniel Radcliffe, and Kristen Stewart, just to name a few.
Let's let these Girls prove their mettle before we break out the pitchforks.
(HBO)
