Barack Obama Reveals Malia Dropped Surname Off Latest Short Film’s Credits

Malia Obama used a nom de plume while screening and submitting her most recent short film, which the former first daughter worked on with Emmy winner Doland Glover, to film festivals.

In an interview snippet posted to social media on Wednesday, Barack Obama is seen sitting for an interview with Ryan Clark on The Pivot Podcast, alongside the former NFL player-hosts Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder. In a post on his Instagram page and X (formerly Twitter) post, Clark outlines the context of this piece of their conversation.  

“President Obama’s daughters Malia & Sasha will always be known as Michelle and Barack Obama’s children. It seems like the ultimate cheat, but it’s something neither of the girls want,” he wrote. “Malia didn’t even use her last name while working on a project with Donald Glover. The former president has gone as far as cutting deals with White House press to exclude them from their scrutiny. There is still some paparazzi, but overall the girls are extremely grounded.”

Clark tells Obama in the clip that his son is playing football for Notre Dame, and in a recent article, he’d been asked about being the son of an NFL player. Clark paraphrases his son’s answer, telling the former president that he told the reporter he used to run from it because kids would say his opportunities only arose because of his father. Now that he’s older, Clark’s son said he’s able to embrace being his father’s legacy because he understands “what it means to represent that name.”

Clark then asked Obama how much he impresses on his girls that they make their way in the world on their own merits. 

“The challenge for us is letting us give them any help, at all,” Obama replied. “They’re very sensitive about this stuff. They’re very stubborn about it. Malia, she’s making movies, so she made her first movie. And, you know, I’ll be a dad, I’ll brag a little bit… her first film went to Sundance and all these fancy film festivals, and she didn’t use Obama on as director on the credits.”

Malia, he revealed, used the name Malia Ann for her credit on the short — Ann being the former first daughter’s middle name. Her short film, The Heart, stars TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe, LaTonya Borsay and John Weigand. Its description reads: “An unexpected request and a terrible loss bring attention to the intense and complex relationship between a mother and her son.”

Obama explained to the podcast’s hosts that he told Malia that he didn’t think her secret would fly under the radar. 

“I was all like, ‘You do know they’ll know who you are,’” he said. “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.’ So I think our daughters go out of their way to not try to leverage that.”

Obama then explained that while his family was living in the White House he made something of a deal with the press corps there that they could follow him around, talk about him and essentially do what they wanted as long as they did one thing: “Leave my children alone. Because they have the right to grow up,” he recalled to the hosts.

“They didn’t choose this, right? Let them grow up,” he continued. “And to the credit of the press, they did leave them alone. Now, as they’ve gotten older, there’s been some paparazzi stuff going on, and it drives them nuts, you know, because their attitude is, ‘We’re not looking for all that.’ So they’re grounded.”

The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Donald Glover about The Heart project in an interview back in April as the star and TV writer was helping produce her short under his production company, Gilga. Malia graduated from Harvard University in 2021 and, having assisted the writing team on HBO’s Girls, landed a writing job on the Glover-helmed Amazon series Swarm.