Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins’ son makes a splash with videos about the life of ‘nepo baby’

For Jack Henry Robbins, his day starts with stretching and meditation, followed by two to three seconds of brushing his teeth. After visiting his favorite neighborhood coffee shop, a Nespresso boutique on the Upper East Side, he heads home to get to work.

“Every day, I like to wake up and pitch a show to HBO or Netflix, depending on my mood,” Robbins tells the camera. “Today, I’m pitching a TV show that I thought of yesterday, which is basically ‘Star Wars’ set in a sewer system—I sold it!” he says before triumphantly closing his laptop and adding, “I’m going to visit my famous mom.”

So anyway, Robbins, the son of actors Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, portrayed himself in “Day in the Life of a Nepo Baby,” a video he posted to Instagram last November that has been viewed more than 3 million times.

Since then, Robbins, 35, has released a series of over-the-top clips on Instagram and TikTok, claiming to reveal what it’s like to be the child of celebrities.

The phrase “nepotism baby” — nepo baby for short — has been used to attack people whose professional achievements are perceived by some to stem from family connections rather than talent. In his videos, Robbins appears to be satirizing the concept of being the spoiled, freeloading son of Hollywood royalty, but he also embraces it.

As Robbins put it in a phone interview, he’s playing a character who amounts to “the worst version of me that could have happened.”

He added of his alter ego: “Here is this painfully out of touch with reality, delusional person who, despite all his advantages, is the world’s least successful nepo baby. I’m having a blast satirizing my biggest insecurity.”

Last week, Robbins added a guest star, posting a video in which he and Sasha Spielberg, the musician daughter of director Steven Spielberg and actress Kate Capshaw, attempt to make a movie together.

“Sasha and I are tired of the lie that nepo babies can’t make art without the help of our parents,” Robbins says. Their brainstorming session, naturally, consists of recycled ideas from their parents’ filmographies. And to avoid comparisons to his famous father, Spielberg adopts a pseudonym: S. Spielberg.

Robbins said the videos were inspired by a 2022 article in New York magazine about the nepo babies phenomenon that sparked a wave of discussion about the children of prominent celebrities.

“When the article came out, I had a complicated emotional response — this insecurity,” said Robbins, who at the time was already trying to establish himself as a filmmaker and had several shorts and a feature, “VHYes,” under his belt. “I didn’t know how to represent how I felt about it,” he added. “I thought, ‘I’m going to give in to this.’”

Like many broad satires, Robbins’s “nepo baby” videos contain a grain of truth. They also touch on a personal sore spot. He recounted a story about attending a New York fashion show with Sarandon as a child. Backstage, a woman asked why a 10-year-old boy was there. The young Robbins pointed to his mother for explanation.

“The woman told me, ‘You’re either going to be amazing at this’ — meaning show business — ‘or you’re going to disappoint everyone,'” Robbins said. “That was something I’ll never forget.”

Later, while promoting his 2016 short film “Hot Winter: A Film by Dick Pierre” at the Sundance Film Festival, Robbins discovered what the children of notable people quickly learn when their own careers are discussed. “The first question I was asked in every interview was, ‘How did your parents inspire this film?’”

This appears to have led to the creation of another clip, in which Robbins travels in character to Huntington Beach, California (“the epicenter of Hollywood,” as he calls it), to meet with a talent manager.

“I think we need to capitalize more on your mother,” the manager says. “What if we put your mother’s name on your name?”

With that, her alter ego adopted a new name: Jack Susan Sarandon Robbins.

Helping to sell the joke are Robbins’s famous parents, who appear in his videos from time to time, often playing exasperated versions of themselves. For Robbins, collaborating with them has been one of the benefits of the project.

“Having a format where we can play together as actors was something I never thought we would experience, because I never wanted to be an actor,” he said.

Another positive has been the freedom to control every aspect of a project. “There are no constraints,” he said. “There are no years and years of development to not do a pilot.”

“The process of waiting to convince X, Y, and Z to make something happen was really wearing me down.”

Robbins said he hasn’t heard back from other celebrity children except Sasha Spielberg (“there’s no group message [para nepo babies]”, he says), but the response on social media has been overwhelmingly positive and has boosted his profile.

If some people don’t realize he’s playing a monstrous version of himself, that’s fine. “My favorite thing in life is to make people laugh,” Robbins said. “If people are laughing, if people are having fun with it, I don’t care if 25 percent think it’s real. I’m not ashamed.”