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 feel creative, and they feel fulfilled. But that’s a very different life than on this side of the door where you’re suddenly playing in this different arena.”
Indeed, since Eilish broke out with her debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” in 2019, it has been a whole different world for Baird’s family — especially the “Birds of a Feather” singer, who was just 17 at the time.
Still, Baird has managed to keep it all in perspective.
“People would always say to me, ‘Is your mind blown that Billie is playing Radio City or Madison Square Garden?’ ” she told Glamour. “And I was like, ‘My mind was blown when she played The Hi Hat in Highland Park [the Los Angeles neighborhood where the former 300-capacity club was located]. It’s all relative. You feel it all.
“You’re just a family, and it’s all very normal, and then the world kind of puts everything else on it,” she added. “You step onstage in front of 100,000 people, and that’s an hour and a half, and then the rest of the time you’re at the dinner table and your brother is giving you s—t. The family part is the part that keeps it sane.”
While the musician launched her “Hit Me Hard and Soft” Tour last Sunday — she hits Prudential Center in Newark, NJ on Oct. 9 before three shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden Oct. 16-18 — Finneas just dropped his second album “For Cryin’ Out Loud!” on Friday.
While acknowledging that “everyone has an agenda” when it comes to her kids, Baird’s parenting goals are very clear: “Your agenda is that your child should be happy and healthy and fulfilled and give back to the world.”
