Stallone Admitting Nepotism for His Daughter Is Worse Than Denying It

Calling Scarlet Rose Stallone's 'Tulsa King' role nepotism turns a dad's favor into a hiring policy on a Paramount+ series.

Sylvester Stallone didn't dodge the question about his daughter. He swatted it. "Of course it's nepotism, you idiot," the "Tulsa King" star said of casting Scarlet Rose Stallone in his Paramount+ crime series, in an Oct. 16 USA Today interview that Deadline and Variety both quoted Saturday.

It may be the most honest thing anyone in Hollywood has said all year, and that's exactly why it should bother you more than the usual denial. A denial leaves room to believe the kid beat everybody else in the room. When the star, who's also an executive producer on the show, admits it, the rumor becomes a hiring policy. No working actor can out-audition a father.

His case is a parenting philosophy. Stallone told USA Today that "you're not a good parent if you haven't performed a little nepotism," and that parents put their kids first and give them every advantage, as Variety quoted him. At a kitchen table, I'd nod along. Making the phone call for your kid is love.

The best objection is that every family business hires family. The deli hires the nephew, and nobody writes a column about it. But a Paramount+ series isn't a family business. Stallone is one name on a long list of executive producers, Taylor Sheridan among them, with two studios behind the show, according to Variety.

And the public has a stake in it. Production is moving from Georgia to New York for the fifth season partly because New York's improved tax incentive makes it cheaper to shoot there, Variety reported Oct. 5. When a state's film tax credit is helping cover the bills, the jobs on that set aren't the family's to hand out.

That same renewal announcement made the job bigger. Scarlet Stallone, who has played Spencer, the barista turned ranch stablehand, since the show's first season, was promoted to series regular for Season 5, Variety reported. Four other actors joined as series regulars that day. Every one of those slots is a job some working actor wanted. Hers came through a door her father says he opened.

Stallone knows how it sounds. "People will say, 'She got that job, it's too easy.' You're right," he told USA Today, as Deadline quoted him. His defense is that opening the door is the only part a parent controls. Whether a kid can hold the job in front of millions of people, he says, is up to the kid.

That's backwards. For an actor, the door is the whole fight. Holding a part on camera is a test you only get to take after you've won the part, and he's just told everyone how his daughter won hers.

None of this is a verdict on Scarlet Stallone's acting. It's a verdict on the system her father just described out loud, as if it were a parent's duty.

He had one more warning for his kids about what's waiting on the other side of that door, according to Variety: "Be careful what you wish for." Everyone still standing outside it wished for something too.

Source: Deadline, retrieved October 24, 2026. Other sources: Variety, Variety (2).