Aimee Lou Wood Shuts Down Patrick Schwarzenegger 'Nepo Baby' Claims
Aimee Lou Wood has jumped to the defence of her White Lotus co-star Patrick Schwarzenegger amid the ongoing conversation about nepotism in Hollywood.
On Sunday, the Bafta winner reacted to a clip of Patrick from an interview with the podcast Real Pod earlier this year, in which he discussed the “nepo baby” label that has been used against him in the past due to the fact his parents are action star Arnold Schwarzenegger and the journalist Maria Shriver.
In the video – reposted by Page Six – Patrick could be heard lamenting: “[There’ll be] people that are like ‘oh, he only got the role because his dad’s in the industry’. There’ll be other people that’ll say, ‘well, I wonder what his dad paid to get him that job?’.
“What am I going to do? Convince all those people that that’s not true? It’s just such a waste of my energy.”
He continued: “I’m never, ever going to convince everybody out there that I work hard, that I have my own values in life, that I want to make my own name for myself – that I don’t do drugs, that I’m not a screw-up, that I’m not a bad, mean person, that I’m not all these different things.
“You’re never going to convince [them] and everyone’s always going to have their opinion of you, no matter what.”
Aimee – who struck up a friendship with Patrick while working together on The White Lotus – reposted the clip on Monday, describing her colleague as the “hardest-working” and “kindest man ever”.
Following this, the pair walked the red carpet at the 2025 Met Gala together, with Patrick offering to arrive at the event with her to help ease her nerves, as he’d already been twice before.
“Patrick, thank god, was like, ‘I’m going… shall we go together in the car?’, and I was like, ‘yes please!’,” she recalled to E! News. “So we came in the car together, and that’s made everything a lot less scary.
“I always say that I think he was my dad in a past life, because I just immediately feel so safe with him. He’s the safest, kindest person, he’s so solid, you just can’t feel nervous or scared when Patrick’s around. He’s just, honestly, the most pure person, I can’t describe it.”
Patrick also told Variety: “I heard Aimee was coming and I immediately texted her and I said, ‘can we please go together? I’m so nervous’. And she was like, ‘I was going to text you the same thing’. I was like, ‘perfect’.
“So, we met up, I went to her hotel, and we showed up together. It’s great. It takes the nerves out of it that you have a real friend to come with.”