Malia Obama launches her professional filmmaking career under the name Malia Ann, stepping away from her political family legacy.
LOS ANGELES — Malia Obama, the elder daughter of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, has spent the years since college trying to become a working filmmaker rather than a political heir. Born in Chicago on July 4, 1998, she is 28. She lives in Los Angeles, where her younger sister, Sasha, also lives, and she has kept a low public profile while accumulating the ordinary credentials of an early career: an internship, a writers’ room, a festival short, and, more recently, commercial directing work.
The path was not sudden. After a gap year, she studied visual and environmental studies at Harvard and graduated in 2021. Before and during college she took industry placements, including an internship at the Weinstein Company and time on the set of the HBO series Girls. Those jobs were unglamorous by design. They placed her in rooms where the family name opened a door and then had to be set aside if she wanted to stay.
The first substantial credit came on Donald Glover’s Amazon series Swarm, which premiered in 2023. Malia joined the writers’ room and shares a writing credit on the episode “Girl, Bye” with series co-creator Janine Nabers. Nabers later described some of her pitches as wild and funny, and called her dedicated to the craft. Glover, who has mentored her through his company Gilga, was blunter about the risk. He told GQ that the first conversation was about the fact that she would only get to do this once: she was Obama’s daughter, and a bad film would follow her. The warning was less a threat than a description of how fame works. Scrutiny arrives before the reel does.