CULTURE

Julia Roberts Loves Billie Eilish More Than Gen Z Does

“Billie Eilish is everything.”


36th Annual ASCAP Pop Music Awards - Show
Frazer Harrison

In case you hadn’t been following her stanning on Instagram, Julie Roberts thinks Billie Eilish “is everything,” as she told Refinery29 recently. So the actress, already being a fan, was a fitting personality to introduce the young singer and her brother and musical collaborator, Finneas, at the ASCAP Awards in Los Angeles Thursday night, where the duo was honored with ASCAP’s Vanguard Award.

Like any good superfan, Roberts delivered a lofty introduction of the pair: “It is thrilling to be here tonight to help celebrate these two people who are so uniquely gifted, such inventive wordsmiths, such wondrous musicians. And that they are in fact brother and sister is pretty darned special,” Roberts said. “Together they have built universes of chaos, heartbreak, and humor that we never realized we longed for and now we will never leave.” It sounds almost ominous, out of context: We will never leave. Eilish, who quite enjoys being a scary teen, must approve.

“When I started this shit, I did not think anyone would give a fuck, so thank you for giving a fuck,” Eilish said in response, accepting the award, according to Variety. For the occasion, she wore an oversized ensemble illustrated with the Power Puff Girls, the look a sort of spiritual sequel to the Sailor Moon look she wore to the iHeartRadio Music Awards. “Giving a fuck,” as Eilish described it, includes “being appreciated for not just being a brand or being just a name and a face, but appreciated for actually creating something and writing it, especially when we wrote it for nobody except us.” (Of course, her face now gets appreciated, too; she recently debuted as one of the new faces of Calvin Klein alongside Bella Hadid.)

“Especially by Julia Roberts? Geesh!” Eilish went on. “The baddest bitch around.”

And if this has anyone suspecting Julia Roberts, 51, has had her pop culture tastes affected by her kids—two are 14, one is 11—we present this additional evidence: The actress has never seen Game of Thrones, whose primary audience (based on purely anecdotal evidence) probably skews a generation older. Why? Because, she recently told Patricia Arquette in an interview for Variety, it seems “too scary” and there’s “maybe too much sex.” Arquette concurred: a lot of sex, also some zombies. Julia Roberts, welcome to Gen Z.

Related: Billie Eilish Finally Met Her First Love Justin Bieber at Coachella