 "Michelle and Barack Obama's daughter Malia changes her famous surname ahead of debut as filmmaker")
Former American President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s elder daughter, Malia, has ditched her famous surname as she embraces her debut in Hollywood as a filmmaker. The 25-year-old budding director adapted the new stage name, Malia Ann (which is her first and middle name) ahead of the Sundance Film Festival premiere of her short film, The Heart in Utah.
In her spotlight video, Malia described The Heart as “an odd little story, somewhat of fable, about a man grieving the death of his mother after she leaves him an unusual request in her will.”
Before making her directorial debut, Malia worked as a staff writer on Donald Glover’s Amazon Prime series Swarm. Praising her, Donald told Vanity Fair, “She’s just, like, an amazingly talented person. She’s really focused, and she’s working really hard. I feel like she’s just somebody who’s gonna have really good things coming soon… Her writing style is great.”
Malia also co-wrote the fifth episode of the show along with creator Janine Nabers. He praised her while talking to ET last year and said, “Some of her pitches were wild as hell, and they were just so good and so fun. She’s an incredible writer. She brought a lot to the table… She’s really, really dedicated to her craft.”
While some critics tried to target her as a nepo kid, Whoopi Goldberg defended her and said on the latest episode of _The View, “_She knows she’s an Obama, why do you care? Why do you care what she calls herself? If she wanted to call herself Jeanette McDonald, she has the right to! If I can be Whoopi Goldberg, she can be whoever the hell she wants to be!”
“I mean, why are people triggered by this kind of stuff? Why are people wasting their time?” she added.
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