Nepo Baby of the Week: Tom Hanks’ Niece Wishes You Didn’t Know Who Her Uncle Is

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. And by “sinned,” I mean I haven’t been watching the hilarious and apparently very melodramatic reality show Claim to Fame, a competition involving non-famous relatives of celebrities.

Maybe it’s because the ABC show hasn’t experienced any viral attention until now that I haven’t been compelled to check it out. Originally, I thought it was a talent competition for aspiring nepo babies whose famous parents refused to book them auditions. (Although, now that I think about it, “Who Wants To Be a Nepo Baby?” is a great concept for a show.) I also assumed the celebrities the contestants were related to were, like, sixth-billed sitcom stars from the ’80s and not anyone I would care about.

Well, now I know Claim to Fame contains some real star-adjacent power, thanks to a viral clip of Tom Hanks’ niece going absolutely ballistic at the end of last Monday’s Season 2 premiere. If you needed more proof that America’s dad is maybe the most normal person in his family, look no further than this video of Carly Reeves finding out that she’s just been eliminated and presumably blowing out a producer’s eardrum in the process.

For the unfamiliar, Claim to Fame is essentially a strategy game not unlike The Traitors, where a group of fame-adjacent contestants have to guess which public figures they’re each related to for a $100,000 prize.

The players begin the season by offering their co-stars one truth and one lie about their illustrious family member. The house the contestants stay in contains a wall of knick knacks and symbols representing each celebrity. Each week, they compete in a challenge to earn additional clues to suss each other out.

Following the challenge, every episode ends with the house voting on which one of the bottom two players will guess one of the housemates’ celebrity relatives. If they get it wrong, they’re eliminated. But if they get it right, the housemate they’ve outed gets the boot.

When I first saw this absolutely bonkers video, I was curious as to how much of this first elimination was orchestrated by producers. Obviously, they would want the first reveal of the season to be a big A-lister. However, watching the entire episode, Reeves is maybe the clumsiest competitor I’ve ever seen on a reality show and exactly the kind of personality I would associate with Hanks’ eccentric family tree.

Tom Hanks’ Niece Carly Reeves Throws Ultimate Tantrum on Reality Show

Immediately, Reeves seems like a handful. She’s sweaty, frantic, and bug-eyed in all of her confessionals and interactions with her co-stars. She turns her head like a chicken at any mention of Tom Hanks. The housemates are specifically transfixed by a miniature bench on the wall of clues that they immediately associate with Forrest Gump, plus a small poster.

Instead of going along with everyone else’s suspicions, Reeves tries to dissuade the house from thinking that ABC could book the relative of a Hollywood icon. (I love that she’s both complimenting and dissing her appearance on this show.)

That said, it isn’t really a shock that Reeves can’t hold it together when her co-star Hugo correctly guesses that she’s a part of the Hanks family. Even before she runs off stage to violently pack her suitcase, she starts aggressively sobbing and screaming at Hugo for betraying her, as if they had established an alliance. Everyone is appropriately alarmed.

The rant itself, though, is a Reality TV Hall of Fame moment. The way Hanks appears on a giant monitor, looking like his jolly old-man self, right before she loses it makes it even funnier.

“The freaking clues are so freaking obvious!” she screams, while stomping up the stairs of their house. “Freaking bench and a freakin’ poster of Forrest Gump—are you kidding me? Why a bench? Why a bench? There’s literally no references to benches in any other movie. Even Gabriel found that out—he’s not even smart.”

“I didn’t even get to do any challenges,” she continues. “I don’t deserve this. I should have more camera time. I should have aired longer!”

Kevin and Frankie Jonas on Their Twisted Show Where Famous Relatives Lie to Each Other for $100K

Of course, this televised tantrum lends itself to several questions about Tom Hanks’ family that have lingered since the emergence of wannabe Rasta Chet Hanks—although I believe the internet has concluded that Chet is mainly a result of whatever the hell is going on with his mother Rita Wilson’s bloodline. Probably to no one’s surprise, Reeves is biologically related to Wilson and not Hanks.

I mainly associate Wilson with her role on Girls as Marnie’s wacky and equally un-self-aware mom. But she’s proven recently that she’s maybe like that in real life, with her sudden desire to rap like her eldest son. Meanwhile, Colin Hanks, whose mother is Samantha Lewes, seems to be a perfectly well-adjusted adult, who’s never not booking acting gigs—even if you can’t recall any off the top of your head. The same goes for Hanks’ and Lewes’ daughter, the journalist and novelist Elizabeth Ann Hanks. We have yet to see if Hanks’ and Wilson’s very normal-looking youngest son, Truman, will publicly embarrass his dad.

For now, Reeves is doing a full press tour about her epic meltdown. If she wanted a quick route to fame, this meltdown honestly sounds like a better option than competing on an ABC show that’s not The Bachelor. Now she just has to keep up the loony antics, like her fake-Jamaican cousin.

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