*Barack Obama revealed on “The Pivot” podcast that his daughters, Sasha and Malia, are working to establish their careers independently of their famous last name.
During the conversation, Obama touched on Malia, 26, crediting herself as “Malia Ann” in her 2023 directorial debut “The Heart,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
“Her first film went to Sundance and all these fancy film festivals and she didn’t use ‘Obama’ as a director on the credits,” he said. “I was all like, ‘You do know they’ll know who you are.’ And she’s all like, ‘You know what? I want them to watch it that first time and not in any way have that association,’” he added.
“I think our daughters go out of their way to not try to leverage that,” he said in the YouTube clip above.
President Obama’s daughters Malia & Sasha will always be known as Michelle & Barack Obama’s children. It seems like the ultimate cheat, but it’s something neither of the girls want.
Malia didn’t even use her last name while working on a project with Donald Glover. The former… pic.twitter.com/RWg8U7n3bg
— Ryan Clark (@Realrclark25) October 30, 2024
“The challenge for us is letting us give them any help at all,” Obama added. “I mean they’re very sensitive about this stuff. They’re very stubborn about it.”
We reported earlier that Malia’s film “The Heart” is a comedy-drama that “follows a lonely man named Josh, portrayed by Tunde Adebimpe, as he grapples with the sudden loss of his mother, Anita, played by LaTonya Borsay. The plot takes an unexpected turn with Anita’s peculiar request in her will for her son to preserve her heart organ and care for it after her passing,” per blexmedia.com.
During a Q&A session at Sundance, Malia described the project as an “allegorical little poem story.”
“The film is about lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret. But I also think it works hard to uncover where tenderness and closeness can exist in these things,” she said in a Meet the Artist video during Sundance.
Donald Glover’s production company produced “The Heart.” In a 2023 interview with GQ, he said he told Malia, “She will only get to do this once,” adding, “You’re Obama’s daughter. So if you make a bad film, it will follow you around.”
READ MORE FROM EURWEB.COM: Whoopi Goldberg Pushes Back Against Criticism of Malia Obama’s Stage Name | WATCH
