Malia Obama is making a name for herself in the film industry … and she’s not using her parents’ name to do it.
Professionally, the former first daughter, an accomplished writer and director, goes by her first and middle names alone: Malia Ann.
“Her first film went to Sundance and all these fancy film festivals and she didn’t use Obama as a director on the credits,” Malia’s father, former President Barack Obama, said on a recent episode of “The Pivot Podcast.”
“I was all like, ‘You do know they’ll know who you are,'” Obama recalled telling Malia. “And she was like, ‘You know what? I want them to watch it that first time and not in any way have that association.”
Obama, 63, noted that both Malia, 26, and her sister, Sasha, 23, “go out of their way to not try to leverage” their family’s fame. The 44th President of the United States shares his two children with his wife of 31 years, Michelle Obama.
“The challenge for us is letting us give them any help at all,” he said on “The Pivot Podcast,” noting that both of his kids are “very sensitive about this stuff.”
Malia, a graduate of Harvard University, worked with Donald Glover on her short film, “The Heart,” which debuted at Sundance in January.
In a “meet the artist” video released by Sundance, Malia said her 18-minute film is about “lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret.”
“The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once,” Glover said in an interview with GQ magazine. “You’re Obama’s daughter. So if you make a bad film, it will follow you around.”
Malia was also recruited by Glover to write his Amazon Prime Video thriller “Swarm.”
“She’s just like, an amazingly talented person,” Glover shared with Vanity Fair in 2022. “She’s really focused, and she’s working really hard.”
“I feel like she’s just somebody who’s gonna have really good things coming soon,” he added. “Her writing style is great.”
