Dakota is quick to realize this, however, and agrees to a truce on such delicate matters. What’s a nepo truce? Apparently it’s when nepo babies press their nepo rings together and recite, “A foot in the door, but so much more,” while the rings glow mysteriously.
It’s absurd, and it’s also a funny way of the three acknowledging how lucky they’ve been. A common defense of celebrity nepo babies, usually from nepo babies themselves, is that being born with connections will “get your foot in the door,” but “there’s still a lot of work that comes after that.” That’s Lily-Rose Depp’s explanation at least, but as many critics have pointed out, getting your foot in the door as an unconnected person is often insanely difficult, and that’s especially true for an industry as exclusive as Hollywood. It’s not just one step in a series of equally-difficult steps; it’s often the hardest and most time-consuming step in the whole process.
The best thing for these nepo babies to do is simply acknowledge all this and move on, rather than pretend as if they’ve succeeded purely on merit alone. This latest Please Don’t Destroy sketch accomplishes the former, with John, Martin and Dakota all fully accepting the nepotism criticisms, all while kindly acknowledging Ben Marshall as the only one in the room without a well-established father in the industry. Ben seems sad to be left out of his friends’ magical truce, but at least he’s got the comfort of knowing he’ll forever be impervious to this specific brand of attack.