Art & Entertainment

Maya Rudolph On Why Having Famous Parents Did Not Help Her Comedy Career: I Knew I Had To Get There Myself

Maya Rudolph is the daughter of Richard Rudolph and Minnie Riperton. In a latest interview, she claimed that having famous parents did not boost her comedy career.

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Best known for ‘Saturday Night Live’ comedian Maya Rudolph is a known face when it comes to playing comic roles in Hollywood. In a recent interview, the actor and comedian talked about growing up under the spotlight and having famous parents. She revealed that having parents who had already established themselves in Hollywood did not give a push to her comedy career.

Appearing on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard, Maya Rudolph talked about her parents – Richard Rudolph and Minnie Riperton. She claimed that being related to these two famous people did not help her much, as people think of it to be. She said, “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’.”

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Rudolph talked about how she wanted to carve a path for herself. She added that she knew that her parents were famous, but she knew that to become a comedian, she would have had to do it herself. She continued, “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 talked about how her friends were not aware that her mother was a singer. She mentioned that because of this she never felt like her mother was a “household name.” She added, “It's interesting because my mom was a singer that not all my friends were that aware of at the time. Everybody that knows who I am now knows that's my mom. But growing up, I didn't feel like she was a household name.”

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Maya Rudolph has worked in films like ‘Grown Ups’, ‘Bridesmaids’, ‘Sisters’, and ‘Luca’ to name a few.  

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