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Malia Obama wants to make a name for herself in the film industry without using her parents' moniker.
On a recent episode of "The Pivot Podcast," former President Barack Obama, Malia's father, discussed how his daughter has declined to go by her last name professionally, per TODAY. The 26-year-old writer-director decided to go by her first and middle name only, 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,” the former president said on the 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 noted that Malia and his younger daughter, Sasha, “go out of their way to not try to leverage” their family's name.
“The challenge for us is letting us give them any help at all,” he said on “The Pivot Podcast,” noting that his daughters are "very sensitive about this stuff.”
Malia, a Harvard University graduate, worked with Donald Glover on her short film, The Heart, which debuted in January at Sundance.
“The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once,” Glover previously said. “You’re Obama’s daughter. So if you make a bad film, it will follow you around.”
Glover also recruited Malia to write his Amazon Prime Video thriller Swarm.
“I feel like she’s just somebody who’s gonna have really good things coming soon,” he said. “Her writing style is great.”
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