Michelle Obama has broken her silence on daughter Malia after she dropped her last name. Malia Ann is currently pursuing a film career in Hollywood. She used her middle name for the credits of the short film, “The Heart”, which she wrote and directed. The short film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024.
Michelle Obama podcast
In a podcast on June 4, Wednesday, Michelle mentioned Malia’s decision to drop the last name, ‘Obama’, after the second term of former president Barack Obama. Michelle appeared on the “Sibling Revelry” podcast, which was cohosted by Oliver and Kate Hudson.
Both the sisters, Malia and Sasha, also share the same alum status from the University of Southern California.
“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. … They’re still doing that,” Obama told the Hudson siblings, noting that “you guys know this as the children of parents who are known.”
Kate and Oliver Hudson are the children of Goldie Hawn and musician Bill Hudson, but they consider Hawn’s longtime partner, Kurt Russell, a father figure.
Obama’s Children want to make their way
“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,” the “Becoming” author added. “They’re very sensitive to that – they want to be their own people.”
“She took off her last name, and we were like, they’re still going to know it’s you, Malia,” Obama said about Malia’s first project. “But we respected the fact that she’s trying to make her way.”
Obama told the Hudson siblings, during the appearance alongside her own brother and “IMO” podcast co-host Craig Robinson, that “our daughters didn’t want to be little princesses in the White House.”
“They wanted to push the envelope; they needed some rope. They wanted to try some things, they wanted to be out in the world, and I knew that under the circumstances, they needed more rope than I probably would’ve given them if I were my mom,” Obama said during the podcast.