Former First Lady, bestselling author and media developer Michelle Obama explained this week that she was okay with her daughter Malia dropping the Obama name from her film credits as a signal that she is making her own way in the industry.
The 23-year-old presented her short film "The Heart" at the Sundance Festival in 2024 under the name Malia Ann, replacing her last name with her middle name in an attempt to be more anonymous.
Obama told Kate and Oliver Hudson on their podcast Sibling Revelry, “Our daughters [Malia and Sasha] are 25 and 23. They are young adult women, but they definitely went through a period in their teen years where it was the push away … [where] you’re trying to distinguish yourself.”
“I mean, it is very important for my kids to feel like they’ve earned what they are getting in the world, and they don’t want people to assume that they don’t work hard, that they’re just naturally, just handed things,” she said. “They’re very sensitive to that — they want to be their own people “Malia, who started in film, I mean, her first project — she took off her last name, and we were like, they’re still going to know it’s you, Malia. But we respected the fact that she’s trying to make her way.”
Of course, the former first lady is right that the attempt at anonymity largely failed. Her film got a lot of attention and the media stories about it clearly said that she was the daughter of a former president (and his also very famous wife).
The reviews of her movie were mixed, with some calling it terrible and others (like the New York Times) praising it.
She was also called a nepo baby by some outlets because of her famous parents.
And let's face it--the odds of an unknown working with Donald Glover while still in college and then getting him to produce an 18-minute film are fractional at best.
She probably would not have had the opportunity to intern with both the CBS sci-fi series Extant and HBO hit Girls, either.
Like one social media commenter featured in Newsweek said, she should just "own" her name and connections, which might have included greats Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg, according to the mentions in her movie's credits.
Malia would have to try a lot harder to get enough distance from her famous parents to make the playing field level, but as long as she can claim she's trying to make her own way, she can claim plausible deniability, right?
Like parents, like daughter, in any case.
The streaming outlets were falling all over themselves to give the Obamas millions and millions of dollars to produce content for them, even though neither one of them had ever done it before.
The world is at Sasha and Malia's feet, and there's really nothing they can do about it other than refuse the spoils or accept them. To pretend things are any different is just ridiculous.
