Funny woman Maya Rudolph is perhaps best known for her work on the iconic sketch show Saturday Night Live but she also has an impressive comedy resume outside of the series. Most recently, she stars on the Apple TV+ series Loot. Many don’t know that Maya’s parents were famous in the music world. Her mom, Minnie Riperton, was a singer and her father is composer Richard Rudolph.
Maya’s lineage didn’t help her break into the comedy world. She opened up about this on the April 22, 2024 episode of the podcast Armchair Expert. She had to put in the work on her own.
Maya is a nepo baby of a different breed. She didn’t want to follow in her famous parents’ footsteps. “They were musicians,” she explained. “They weren't actors.”
Maya was on a different path. “My trajectory was I wanted to go to New York, and I wanted to be on Saturday Night Live. That’s a huge undertaking,” she continued.
More from LittleThings: 13 Behind-The-Scenes Facts You Never Knew About 'SNL'
Her parents’ connections didn’t translate into the comedy world. “I wasn’t like, ‘Oh my dad writes songs, that’s gonna make me a comedian,’” she recalled. “There was no direct line. I knew I had to get there myself.”
Maya succeeded in making her SNL dreams come true. Unfortunately, her mom didn’t live to see this. Minnie died when Maya was just 6 years old. She died from breast cancer and she was only 31 at the time of her passing.
Maya didn’t talk about her mom when she was breaking into comedy. "When I started doing SNL, people didn't really know she was my mom, and they figured it out later,” Maya recalled. “So, look, when you're a kid and your mom dies, you don't want people to know that. I’ll never get over how young she was.”
Maya is a mom herself these days. She shares four children with her partner Paul Thomas Anderson: Pearl, Lucille, Jack, and Minnie. Maya calls Thomas her husband ever since the birth of Pearl, even though they are not legally married.
