Michelle Obama has opened up about her eldest daughter shunning the famous family name as she tries to forge her own path.
In a new interview on the Sibling Revelry podcast hosted by Kate and Oliver Hudson, the former first lady acknowledged the 26-year-old’s decision to go by “Malia Ann” while launching her career in film.
“Malia, who started in film—I mean, her first project—she took off her last name,” Obama said. “And we’re like, ‘They’re still gonna know it’s you, sweetie.’ But we get it.”
The subtle change was part of a broader effort by both Malia, who graduated from Harvard in 2021, and her younger sister, Sasha, 23, to break free from the long shadow of their parents’ fame, the former first lady suggested. “You’re trying to find your own way, you want your own identity, you want your own life,” she said.
“They are young adult women, but they definitely went through a period in their teen years where it was the push away ... [where] you’re trying to distinguish yourself,” she added.
“I mean, 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,” she said. “They’re very sensitive to that, they want to be their own people.”
Malia’s short film, The Heart, premiered at Sundance in January. It tells the story of a grieving son navigating loss and connection—what she called “an odd little story” about “things that I’ve been seeing and experiencing in the world.”
Before her directorial debut, she cut her teeth as a staff writer on Donald Glover’s Amazon series Swarm, where Glover praised her as “incredibly talented.”
Michelle, who has frequently spoken about the pressures of public life on her daughters, made clear that the Obamas aren’t pushing their children into any particular path.
“It’s important for my kids to feel like they’ve earned what they have,” she said. “It’s their work. It’s not mom and dad hooking them up.”
Former President Barack Obama, for his part, also weighed in—joking that when Malia explained the name change, he responded, “‘You do know they’re gonna figure out who you are.’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah, I know.’”
Michelle and her brother Craig Robinson, meanwhile, have been hitting the podcast circuit.
On Jay Shetty’s On Purpose earlier this month, she told the host she was going through therapy, partly due to her daughters getting older and flying the nest.
“At this phase of my life, I’m in therapy right now because I’m transitioning, you know? I’m 60 years old, I’ve finished a really hard thing in my life with my family intact, I’m an empty nester, my girls are in—you know, they’ve been launched," she said.
Malia, who turns 27 in July, and Sasha, who turns 24 this month, were just children when their father became president of the United States in 2009.
Michelle Obama said her “formal therapy” serves as a “tune-up for this next phase” in an attempt to “unwind some old habits and sort through some old guilt.”
She also set the record straight on divorce rumors on The Diary of a CEO podcast last month.
“If I were having problems with my husband, everybody would know about it,” she said.
