Malia Obama used a nom de plume while screening and introducing her most recent short film, which the former first daughter worked on with Emmy winner Doland Glover, at film festivals.
In an interview snippet posted on social media on Wednesday, Barack Obama is seen sitting down for an interview with Ryan Clark on The pivot podcastalong with former NFL player-hosts Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder. In a post on his Instagram page and on X (formerly Twitter), Clark outlines the context of this piece of their conversation.
“President Obama's daughters, Malia and Sasha, will always be known as the daughters of Michelle and Barack Obama. It seems like the ultimate cheat, but it's something neither girl wants,” he wrote. “Malia didn't even use her last name while working on a project with Donald Glover. The former president went so far as to cut deals with the White House press to exclude her from their scrutiny. There is still some paparazzi, but overall the girls are extremely down to earth.”
Clark tells Obama in the clip that his son plays football for Notre Dame and, in a recent article, was asked if he was the son of an NFL player. Clark paraphrases his son's response, telling the former president that he told the reporter he was running away because kids would say his opportunities only came because of his father. Now that he is older, Clark's son said he is able to embrace his father's legacy because he understands “what it means to represent that name.”
Clark then asked Obama how impressed he is with his girls as they make their way in the world on their own merit.
“The challenge for us is to allow ourselves to give them the minimum amount of help,” Obama responded. “They are very sensitive about these things. They are very stubborn about it. Malia is making movies, so she made her first movie. And, you know, I'm going to be a dad, I'm going to brag a little – his first movie went to Sundance and all these fancy film festivals, and he didn't use Obama as a director in the credits.
Malia, she revealed, used the name Malia Ann for her credits in the short film: Ann is the former first daughter's middle name. His short film, The heart, stars Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe, LaTonya Borsay and John Weigand on TV. Its description reads: “An unexpected request and a terrible loss bring the focus back to the intense and complex relationship between a mother and her child.”
Obama explained to the podcast hosts that he told Malia that he didn't think her secret would go unnoticed.
“I was all like, 'You know they're going to know who you are,'” he said. “And she says, 'You know what? I want them to watch it for the first time and not have that association in any way.' So I think our daughters go out of their way not to try to exploit that.
Obama then explained that while his family was living in the White House they had made some kind of deal with the local press where they could follow him anywhere, talk about him and basically do whatever they wanted as long as they did one thing: “Leave my children alone. Because they have the right to grow,” he reminded the hosts.
“They didn't choose this, right? Let them grow,” he continued. “And to the press's credit, they left them alone. Now, when they got older, there was some paparazzi stuff going on, and it drives them crazy, you know, because their attitude is, 'We're not looking for all this.' So I'm grounded.”
The Hollywood journalist I talked to Donald Glover about it The heart project in an interview in April while the TV star and writer was helping produce her short film with her production company, Gilga. Malia graduated from Harvard University in 2021 and, after assisting the HBO writing team Girlsgot a writing job on the Amazon series directed by Glover Swarm.