Maya then reflected on her mother's fame, although she wasn't quite sure that many of her peers knew about her success. "It's interesting because my mom was a singer that not all my friends were that aware of at the time,' she said.
- Apr 23, 2024
AceShowbiz - Having famous parents is not as much of an advantage as people may think, at least for Maya Rudolph. When reflecting on what it was like growing up in the entertainment industry, the "Bridesmaids" actress claimed she had to reach success by herself.
The 51-year-old, who is the daughter of American songwriter and musician Richard Rudolph and late singer-songwriter Minnie Riperton, opened up about the matter when appearing on Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast. In the Monday, April 22 episode of the podcast, she said of her parents, "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'," she added. "I understand that drive to be somewhere else - forage in a new city and create my own path. But that's a huge undertaking," she continued. "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."
Maya then discussed her mother's fame. "It's interesting because my mom was a singer that not all my friends were that aware of at the time," she said. "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. I felt like she was special, yeah."
The comedienne, who was only six years old when her mom died of breast cancer in 1979 at the age of 31, claimed networks like MTV weren't on air yet during the peak of her mother's fame. Dax then chimed in, "She was also insanely young when she died."
Maya later shared, "So when I started doing SNL, people didn't really know she was my mom, and they figured it out later." She went on to note, "So, look, when you're a kid and your mom dies, you don't want people to know that."
