Eric Roberts was allegedly instructed to keep his distance from daughter Emma Roberts and sister Julia Roberts.
During a recent appearance on the“Still Here Hollywood” podcast, Eric, 68, was asked how Julia, 56, was doing.
“You’ll have to ask her,” Eric quipped. “I love my sister, but I can’t talk about her. She [doesn’t] want to talk about it.”
Eric and Julia are two of the children of Walter Grady Roberts and Betty Lou Bredemus, alongside sister Lisa Gillian Roberts. After Eric and Julia both pursued acting careers, their dynamic was seemingly strained at times.
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“Julia and I have always been fine,” the Dark Knight actor revealed during a June 2022 appearance on the “Behind the Velvet Rope With David Yontef” podcast. “I think years and years ago, I was doing a press tour for some movie. … It was just when Pretty Woman [had been] released, and so they’re asking a bunch of questions about Julia. And I said, ‘Hey, excuse me. Can we talk about me?’”
Eric continued: “Suddenly … I keep hearing about [these issues] I have with my sister that I don’t [actually] have with my sister. They’re just popping up all over the place, and I’m asked about them as if they’re real issues. [I’d say,] ‘Oh, I wasn’t aware of that.’ … [It] blew up and blew up and became all these things it wasn’t and [there was gossip that] we don’t agree on a lot of things.”
Eric has also seemingly been estranged from daughter Emma, 33, whom he shares with ex Kelly Cunningham.
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“My daughter told me not to talk about her, but I stumbled and do,” Eric said on the “Still Here Hollywood” episode. “I’m not supposed to talk about either of them. But I do.”
It is not known why Eric and Emma are at odds, but he remains proud of her career. (Neither Julia nor Emma have publicly addressed their rumored drama with Eric.)
“I’m in love with my daughter’s work these days,” Eric gushed during the podcast. “I can’t believe how great she’s become. I’m so proud of her I can’t see straight. Since her performance in Maybe I Do until right now, she overwhelms me with pride and just, ‘Oh, my God, here she goes again.’ And I’m just so happy to be her dad because she’s kicking ass. And I’m so proud.”
According to Eric, he’s done “absolutely nothing” to help Emma succeed except “[giving] her that name.”
Emma, meanwhile, has felt that she’s needed to prove herself more in audition rooms because of her famous father and aunt.
“I think there’s two sides of the coin. People like to say, you know, you have a leg up because you have family in the industry,” Emma said on a June episode of the “Table for Two With Bruce Bozzi” podcast. “But then the other side to that is you have to prove yourself more. Also, if people don’t have good experiences with other people in your family, then you’ll never get a chance.”
