Willow Smith has hit back at claims she’s a nepo baby arguing her parents aren’t the ‘only reason’ she’s successful.

With multiple creatives having come forward to reject being labelled a ‘nepo baby’ such as Zooey Deschanel and Maya Rudolph, Willow Smith has now entered the discussion.

The 23-year-old – full name Willow Camille Reign Smith – is a singer and actor, alongside also being the daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.

She’s starred in I Am Legend alongside her dad, but also flew from the nest solo for The Lorax and has since gone on to carve out a career in the music industry after releasing her first iconic track ‘Whip My Hair’ in 2010.

But would she have made it in each industry had it not been for her famous parents?

The question – and whether it’s fair to call Willow a nepo baby – has been highly debated on social media.

One X user said: “Jaden and Willow Smith are the most respected nepo babies in my eyes.”

However, another argued: “Yes Willow Smith is a nepo baby, but she’s STILL a prodigy, 2 things can be true at once!”

And Willow has since opened up about the labelling.

And just so we’re all clear on the exact definition of a ‘nepo baby’ – a.k.a. nepotism baby – the Oxford Collins Dictionary states the definition of nepotism is: “The unfair use of power in order to get jobs or other benefits for your family or friends.”

But with Will Smith as her dad and Jada Pinkett Smith as her mom, what impact does Willow think that’s had on her as a person and her success?

Well, she tells Allure she ‘truly’ believes her ‘spirit is a strong spirit’ and even if her parents ‘weren’t who they were’ she’d ‘still be a weirdo and a crazy thinker’.

She continues: “I definitely think that a little bit of insecurity has driven me harder because people do think that the only reason I’m successful is because of my parents.

“That has driven me to work really hard to try to prove them wrong.

“But nowadays, I don’t need to prove s**t to anybody.”

*Mic drop*

On a more serious note, she also said she’s still had to fight against racist attitudes in spite of her famous parents, adding: “There have been some experiences where I went into a place that I have worked in the past and my picture could even be up on the wall, and they treat me like, ‘This is a little bit out of your price range’ or ‘You don’t really belong here.’

“Being Black in America, even with privilege, which I’m never going to deny that I have, you’re still Black.”

Will Smith’s kids Jaden and Willow wish that some family matter had ‘remained private’, a source has told Entertainment Tonight.

The statement has come after their mother Jada Pinkett Smith published a tell-all memoir in which she revealed details about her marriage to Will Smith.

Perhaps the most shocking of these revelations is that despite being married for 20 years, the pair have been separated for the past seven.

Jada spoke to Today’s Hoda Kotb ahead of the release of her memoir Worthy on October 4.

She said: “I think by the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying.

“I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”

She also went on to explain why they had decided to keep the decision to separate secret.

Jada said: “I think just not being ready yet. Still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in a partnership, and in regards to how do we present that to people, you know? And we hadn’t figured that out.”

She added: “I think by the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying. I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.”

Jada also explained that she and Will are now focussed on ‘deep healing’, and said that she would still be there for Smith.

And yes, this means that for the time being at least, divorce is off the table.

Jada explained: “We don’t want to. We love our family. And we love each other. It’s more of a life partnership.”

Now, a source had revealed what Will and Jada’s kids think of all this.

The source told Entertainment Tonight that Jaden and Willow ‘feel bad’ for their dad.

The source said: “They know he has been going through a lot lately and this isn’t helping.

“They wish some of their family’s private matters remained private.”

As for what Will Smith, 55, is getting up to amid the revelations, the source told ET that he is ‘trying to stay busy and has been hanging out with his good friends and his kids’.

The source added: “He’s trying not to let any outside noise impact him.

“Will loves Jada and feels like he has always had her back and always will.

“He has been trying to be supportive, while also taking care of himself.”

Jaden Smith has revealed that his mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, introduced the family to psychedelics.

The 24-year-old son of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith said that the family had each managed to find the drugs in their own way. However, it was Jada who had first ‘made that step’.

Pinkett Smith and Smith met in 1994 on the set of Fresh Prince, where she’d audition to play his on-screen girlfriend.

Smith developed feelings for Pinkett Smith before ending his marriage, but the pair didn’t start dating until after his divorce.

“I had a realization I wasn’t with the person I was supposed to be with,” he recalled on Red Table Talk in 2018.

“I was sitting in a [bathroom] stall and I was crying and laughing uncontrollably, and I knew [Jada] was the woman I was supposed to be with.”

Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

But before pursuing things with Ali star Pinkett Smith, the 52-year-old had encouraged him to try and reconcile with Zampino for the sake of their son.

Part of her new memoir Worthy reads: “He was in the middle of his divorce from Sheree, and I didn’t know a damn thing about the complexities of divorce other than what I’d observed in my dysfunctional upbringing.

“My biggest misunderstanding about the dissolution of marriage was the belief that divorce and a breakup were the same.

“I figured, once you decided to send divorce papers, that meant you were truly done.”

But Pinkett Smith had their son Trey, then two years old, at the forefront of her mind.

Recalling a phone call with Smith who had expressed the potential of reconciliation with Zampino, the mum-of-two penned: “Hot tears spilled from my eyes, but my voice on the phone held steady.

“It occurred to me that this wasn’t about me or even us. This was really about Will and Sheree’s two-year-old son, Trey.”

Pinkett Smith went on: “As calmly as I could, I said, ‘You have to try. There is a child involved’.”

She went on to hail Smith as ‘the best thing that had happened to me in a long time’, but she knew that him trying to fix his marriage was ‘for the better’.

But two weeks later Smith confirmed that he and Zampino were continuing with their divorce

For those unaware, a prenup is usually done before a marriage, outlining who is responsible for the property and finances of each partner during the marriage and where that goes after a divorce.

Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock this week, you’ll know that Jada shocked fans after revealing she and husband Will have been ‘secretly separated’ for the last seven years.

Despite that, Jada says she has no plans to divorce Will, telling Hoda Kotb on the Today show that she made ‘a promise that there will never be a reason for us to get a divorce’.

“We will work through whatever. And I just haven’t been able to break that promise,” she added.

Coinciding with that, Jada has now shared the reason why herself and Will decided against a prenuptial agreement.