In 2025, the concept of “nepo babies” reached a boiling point. On one hand, Lily Collins and Maya Hawke have pushed their way to the forefront with talent that is hard to dispute. On the other, Twitter has been awash with complaints about unearned privilege every time a nepo baby lands a leading role. Plainly, both sides have a point. Talent can take you far, but connections take you faster, and nepo babies are born into a world padded with them.
When Odessa A’zion, the daughter of Pamela Adlon, breaks out in Marty Supreme with an impressive performance that seems tailor-made for her, and then blossoms in the buzzy HBO comedy series I Love LA, the question is back on the table. Is the 25-year-old A’zion, who changed her last name to avoid being identified with her family history, just another nepo baby, or proof that show business also runs in the family?
Odessa Zion Segall-Adlon (she is Jewish) was born in June 2000 in Los Angeles into a well-established Hollywood family. Her mother, Pamela Adlon, is best known as the creator and star of Better Things, as well as for her roles in Louie and Californication. Her father is German director Felix Adlon. One grandfather is American producer Don Segall, the other is renowned German filmmaker Percy Adlon. She grew up as the middle child between two sisters, older Gideon and younger Valentine “Rocky,” who also went on to become actresses. That, she has said, made the atmosphere at home slightly strange and highly competitive, with the sisters running into one another on the way to the bathroom and while waiting for the same auditions.
A’zion was a child who would recite Jack Nicholson scenes from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest into the shower mirror and dream of following her parents into the family trade. At 8 years old, she asked her parents for professional headshots as a gift, but they did not rush to throw her into the deep end and decided she would wait until the advanced age of 16 to begin. A’zion could not hold back. At 15, she ran away from home, crashed on friends’ couches and found herself an agent. For nearly a year, she auditioned nonstop without landing a single role, leading her to the inevitable conclusion that she was probably “terrible,” and to a reconciliatory return home. The humbling experience transformed the troubled child who used to jump the fence to escape school into the family peacemaker, entrusted with keeping the peace at home, because peace, as we know, begins within.
After a few tiny roles as a child, A’zion landed her first significant part on the series Nashville, playing Liv, a defiant, rebellious teenager grappling with bisexuality and a strained relationship with her father. She closed out her school years at prom, arriving on the arm of another nepo baby, Jaden Smith, the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, with whom she had a brief romance at the time. Her career continued to tread water with a role in the psychological thriller Ladyworld and the series Fam, but the real turning point came with her decision to change her last name from Adlon to A’zion, a combination of the first letter of Adlon and her middle name, Zion. Then came the lead role in Netflix’s teen drama Grand Army, in which she played Joey Del Marco, a confrontational Brooklyn high school student dealing with bisexual identity and the trauma of sexual assault, suggesting a pattern was beginning to emerge.
A’zion trained six hours a day for the series’ dance sequence until she tore a groin muscle, yet still refused to use a stunt double. On the horror film Hellraiser, a reboot of the iconic original, she shot night after night in Belgrade, lost a tooth on set and suffered physical exhaustion from prolonged crying in nearly every scene. A’zion embraces and memorializes those sacrifices by keeping scripts from her films, stained with “blood” (fake blood), fingerprints and used gum she has to deal with before going on camera. “That grime is proof of the work I put in,” she has explained in interviews.
Now A’zion has reached her two holy grails. On television, she stars in I Love LA, Rachel Sennott’s buzzy HBO series, something like Girls but about zillennials in Los Angeles. She plays Tallulah, a breathtakingly shallow influencer who steals Balenciaga bags, lives in Instagram nihilism and projects whimsical innocence, a performance that made critics laugh and cry at the same time. A sigh of relief was heard across Hollywood when the series was renewed for a second season, an event A’zion described as a curse being lifted after previous projects in which she was a regular failed to make it past their first seasons.
But the ultimate prize is her role in Marty Supreme, the new film by Josh Safdie, which arrives with a strong whiff of Oscar buzz. A’zion set her sights on the role of Rachel Meisler, the scheming childhood friend of the main character played by Timothee Chalamet. She is a pathological liar and manipulator, a survivor and, above all, pregnant by Marty, an experience A’zion was eager to explore. A Zoom call with Safdie left him with the impression that she was too young for the part, but A’zion did not give up. She belongs to the generation raised on self-taped auditions and knew how to turn them into short films and use them to sell her abilities.
She filmed her Marty Supreme audition while shooting another movie, Until Dawn, in Bucharest. She went out into the street at night, searched for, and found, a real phone booth that fit one of the scenes and persuaded Belmont Cameli, her co-star, to hold the camera. It worked. Safdie was convinced, and A’zion did not slow down. Chalamet may have spent six years learning pingpong for the role, but A’zion did not cut corners either. She chopped and dyed her hair, using a color that triggered an allergic reaction on her scalp. To feel the full physical weight of the role on set, she asked wardrobe for two corsets and weights, which she placed inside the fake pregnancy belly to experience the difficulty of breathing. She emerged on the other side happy and fulfilled, with a collection of blisters and cuts, and with nominations from the New York Film Critics Online for breakthrough actress and best supporting actress.
Not a Zionist
A’zion is currently making the rounds on the promotional tour for Marty Supreme, and when she is not on the road she is holed up at her home in Los Angeles with no fewer than 10 pets: four dogs, three cats, two snakes and an iguana. She may have reached a place of professional comfort, but her Jewish identity has recently come back to haunt her.
Just last December, pro-Palestinian users combed through her Instagram account and found photos of her wearing a T-shirt bearing the Israel Defense Forces logo, a common souvenir among American tourists and Birthright Israel alumni. It later emerged that A’zion had once run a small online sales campaign offering similar shirts for $20 to $30 apiece, perhaps to fund new couch covers. She was soon accused of being a Zionist and complicit in genocide. Her adopted last name only seemed to inflame critics further, prompting calls to “cancel” her or at least have HBO drop her.
A’zion responded quickly, pushing back and saying she was “not a Zio (a slang term for Zionist) and does not support the IDF or Benjamin Netanyahu in any way. This was eight years ago, when I was 17, a youthful mistake.” She closed with a textbook zillennial declaration: “I am against all violence, against genocide on both sides, and for peace.” She stressed that her middle name, Zion, has no connection to support for Israel or any political ideology. That response, in turn, angered pro-Israel supporters, who took issue with her use of the word “Zio,” a term sometimes viewed as an antisemitic slur, and accused her of pandering to the far left. In short, A’zion managed to upset everyone.
But to restore some balance, let’s turn to love. A’zion generally keeps her private life out of the press, and none of her relationships has ever been officially confirmed. Still, her name has been linked to at least one person, setting aside that teenage flirtation with Jaden Smith: Drew Starkey of Outer Banks. They first met on the set of Hellraiser, and since then A’zion has shared photos of him on Instagram, including a birthday post in which she called him by his first name, Joseph, and a joint photo of the two brushing their teeth together, the height of intimacy for their generation. They have also been spotted together at public events, and in January 2024 were seen leaving Paris together during Fashion Week, surrounded by fans and paparazzi.
Another encounter that set the internet buzzing involved Billie Eilish. The provocative pop star briefly posted, and quickly deleted, a video from the LACMA Art+Film Gala showing her kissing A’zion. The two were also seen together during the first weekend of the Coachella festival in April 2024. Whether this signaled a romantic relationship or something more fluid and undefined between young women resistant to restrictive social norms remains unclear.
At 25, A’zion has gone from nepo baby to a Hollywood force that is hard to ignore, evolving from a troublemaking kid into a scene-stealing actress. And as they say in the IDF: Good luck in carrying out the mission.