The Stunning Transformation Of Malia Obama
Following Barack Obama's win as the president of the United States, Malia Obama was set for a life in the public eye. Her father's responsibilities meant major change for the whole family, and Michelle Obama wanted to make sure that Malia, along with her sister Sasha Obama, did not end up resenting him, or the presidency, for it. "Even as Barack being the president of the United States, he worked his schedule around their schedule. They weren't waiting until 9 o'clock at night to eat because dad was running late. They never couldn't not go somewhere or do something because of dad," she explained on her podcast "Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast" in 2020.
Given the out of the ordinary circumstances of Malia Obama's life from a young age, she clung to normalcy as much as possible in her personal life. "They really want normalcy, and the White House isn't normal," Michelle Obama shared in an interview with Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show." Despite the conditions she grew up in, which could've made her entitled, Malia made the most out of it while staying level-headed. Here's a look at her stunning transformation from a child living in the White House to a TV writer and director based in Los Angeles.
She was born on July 4, 1998
Malia Obama was born at the University of Chicago Medical Center on July 4, 1998. Yes, on Independence Day — fitting for the future daughter of the president. She was delivered by Dr. Anita Blanchard, a friend of the family who, probably due to her important role in Obama's delivery, was later chosen to be her godmother.
Before Obama came into the picture, however, her parents, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, experienced infertility issues. Both she and her sister, Sasha Obama, were conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF). "The biological clock is real because egg production is limited," Michelle Obama shared in an interview with ABC. "And I realized that, as I was 34 and 35, we had to do IVF."
Prior to moving into the White House, the Obamas lived in Chicago. Barack Obama was an Illinois state senator and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. Michelle Obama was an associate dean of student services at the same university before she was appointed as vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Both Malia Obama and Sasha Obama attended the University of Chicago Laboratory School until they moved into the White House.
In 2008, Malia Obama moved to the White House
Once Barack Obama officially became POTUS, the Obama family had to pack up their lives in Chicago to make the big move to the White House. We can only imagine how much of a culture shock that must've been for the Obama girls. At the time, Malia Obama was 10 years old while Sasha Obama was seven. One of the firsts on the agenda was a grand tour of their new home by none other than Jenna Bush and Barbara Bush who occupied the White House before them. Talk about a warm welcome.
Given the new living situation, and everything else that it would entail, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama tried their best to let their children lead a normal childhood. "We had to parent by creating this cocoon of normalcy in a pretty crazy abnormal world," Michelle Obama shared in an episode of "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend." For Michelle, it meant being present in their children's lives. "It was very much keeping them in the reality making sure we went to the parent-teacher conferences and that we went to their games and that we were sitting on the sidelines with them," she explained. With the living situation being temporary, she wanted to make sure they were equipped for the real world. "When we're out of here in a few years, they have to be able to function like normal people," Michelle said on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon."
She spent most of her formative years living in the White House
Part of the White House experience is having a detailed security service with you at all times, which also means going by a code name. Malia Obama's code name was "Radiance," an alliteration of Barack Obama's codename "Renegade." Following tradition, all the Obama family's codenames started with the letter R. Michelle Obama went by "Renaissance," while Sasha Obama went by "Rosebud." The Secret Service was around for many core experiences of Malia's life, from sleepovers, concerts, and even their first dates. While having them around for some of those moments may have been a bit of a drag, I think even Malia would find the novelty in telling people that the Secret Service taught her how to drive.
In an episode of "Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast," Michelle Obama discussed parenting with her brother, Craig Robinson, and her mother, Marian Robinson. Michelle admits that raising children in the White House was a challenge. "It's like, pluckin' these little girls out of our normal life on the South Side of Chicago [...] and our way of doing things, and our community, and then putting them in a historic mansion with butlers and maids, and florists, and gardeners, and Secret Service, and then trying to make sure that they understood boundaries, understood responsibility," she said. Her brother responded by commending the group effort (Barack, Michelle, and Michelle's mother) that went into parenting them since they "ended up so well-adjusted."
She graduated from the prestigious Sidwell Friends School in 2016
Moving from Chicago to the White House meant big changes. Among them was finding the right school for their children, Malia and Sasha Obama. After thoroughly deliberating a list of schools, Michelle Obama and Barack Obama decided on Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. which their children started attending in 2009. Aside from the top-notch education they would be receiving, Sidwell Friends School is no stranger to presidential children. In the past, Sidwell Friends School's halls have been graced by other political figures and their children, such as Tricia Nixon Cox, Chelsea Clinton, and Maisy Biden (Joe Biden's granddaughter).
During Malia Obama's graduation, Sidwell Friends School made some minor adjustments to the program to accommodate the first family. They generally try not to cause a scene when there are VIPs, but the security risks of having a president on their premises were not to be ignored. The graduation ceremony required tickets instead of being open to the public. Other than the necessary security measures taken, there was no special treatment for the first family. "They try to make it as seamless as possible for everyone. There's no hoopla around the first family here," Phronie Jackson, a parent in attendance at the ceremony, told The Washington Post.
Her strong command of the Spanish language has served her well on numerous occasions
Malia Obama is no stranger to a presidential trip, as she has accompanied her parents on numerous occasions. Though she technically isn't required to do anything, she has stepped up to help out when needed. During Barack Obama's trip to Cuba in 2016, Malia Obama ended up becoming his translator. "Her Spanish is much better than mine, and I'm hoping that she has a chance to get entirely fluent," Barack expressed in an interview with ABC News' David Muir. In the same interview, the former president compared his Spanish skills to that of a 2-year-old.
She had another chance to put her Spanish skills to the test in 2017 during her gap year. Malia participated in an educational 83-day gap year program in South America by Where There Be Dragons. Part of the program was a five-day trek. One of the guides, Gregorio Mamani, only had good things to say about the young Obama. "She was very humble, chatty, spoke Spanish very well," he told The New York Times. Despite her status as the president's daughter, she wasn't given any special treatment, and she probably didn't expect to be treated differently either. She performed the required chores, just like everyone else in the program.
She's had photos and videos of her leaked to the press
Being a teenage girl is hard enough on its own; what more if any mistake could be publicized and scrutinized by the world? By 2016, Malia Obama was no longer a minor, and as a public figure, she became subject to media coverage. Obama attended the four-day music festival, Lollapalooza, two years in a row. In both years, videos and photos of her were leaked.
In 2016, a video of her dancing to a Mac Miller set was posted online, followed by a video of her smoking what eyewitnesses claimed to be marijuana. The following year didn't prove to be any better. Aside from an innocent video of her headbanging and dancing to the set of The Killers, there was footage of her being driven out of the venue, seemingly unconscious. It didn't stop there though as another video of her smoking was posted on Instagram by a festivalgoer and later deleted. Obama could not catch a break.
Fellow presidential children Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton released statements asserting Malia's right to privacy. "Malia Obama should be allowed the same privacy as her school aged peers. She is a young adult and private citizen, and should be OFF limits," Trump wrote on X. While Clinton urged people not to make Obama's life clickbait, "Malia Obama's private life, as a young woman, a college student, a private citizen, should not be your clickbait. Be better," she shared (via X).
She and her family moved out of the White House in 2017
The end of Barack Obama's presidency meant the end of their stay at the White House, a place that Malia Obama had called home for eight years. "There were great joys in the White House. There was never a time where we didn't recognize what an extraordinary privilege it was to be there," the former president shared in an interview with People. "Most importantly, our children emerged intact and they are wonderful, kind, thoughtful, creative — and not entitled — young women. So that's a big sigh of relief," he continued.
Necessary farewells were in place as their stay was coming to an end. For Malia and Sasha Obama, it meant hosting their last sleepover. "[B]ecause of course on Inauguration Day, because my girls are so normal, they're like, 'Well, eight girls are gonna be sleeping here because it's our last time, and we want pizza and we want nuggets.' And it's like, really?" Michelle Obama shared during the question-and-answer portion of the American Institute of Architecture conference (via People). According to the former first lady, saying goodbye was an emotional time for her daughters. "That moment of transition, right before the doors opened and we welcomed in the new family, our kids were leaving out the back door in tears, saying goodbye to people," she revealed. "There's a sentimentality about this place, that they've had so many amazing experiences, and the staff are part of the family," Barack Obama told People.
Malia Obama decided to take a gap year before attending Harvard
After graduating from Sidwell Friends in 2016, Malia Obama decided to take a gap year before attending Harvard University. "She took advantage of a very interesting opportunity at a very unique time in her life," Anita McBride, chief of staff of former first lady Laura Bush, told the Chicago Tribune. By taking a gap year, Obama "would arrive on campus with less visibility and pressure than had she started in 2016 during her father's final months in the Oval Office." Taking a gap year is also encouraged by Harvard themselves, provided the students don't apply to another degree-granting program. So all around, taking a year was a favorable choice for the former first daughter who would attend Harvard in the fall of 2017.
And trust us when we say that the time she took was jam-packed. During Obama's gap year, she attended the Sundance Film Festival, joined the Dakota Pipeline Protest, worked as an intern for the Weinstein Company, joined her 83-day gap program in South America where she visited Bolivia and Peru, attended Lollapalooza, and even tagged along her parent's short trip to Indonesia.
She took on various internships in the entertainment industry
Malia Obama explored her interest in the entertainment industry pretty early on. "Malia has expressed some interest in filmmaking. Just like her father, she is an avid reader, and she enjoys movies," Michelle Obama shared in 2012 (via People). Two years later, she got a head start on her career by working as a production assistant on Halle Berry's sci-fi drama series "Extant." Berry only had good things to say about the young PA. "She is such a smart, beautiful, young woman," she explained in an interview with Andy Cohen on "Watch What Happens Live." However, Berry admits that she, along with the rest of the crew, had a difficult time seeing her as just a PA. "She was down to do whatever a PA is asked to do, and I had wild respect for her for that [...] but we just couldn't really see her as one, but to her credit, she tried very hard to be one," Berry explained.
During her internship at HBO in 2015, Obama was invited to intern on the set of Lena Dunham's "Girls" where she was tasked with writer's assistant work. "I mean obviously we weren't like making her go get our coffee," Dunham shared on the "Howard Stern Show." "There's a job when you sit on the set [...] where you take down the improv so we can get it in the next shots," Jenni Konner, co-showrunner of "Girls," shared.
She and her sister, Sasha Obama, are activists
The Obama daughters took part in the nationwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer of 2020, which were prompted by numerous acts of racism and police brutality that resulted in the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black lives. "Malia and Sasha found their own ways to get involved with the demonstrations and activism that you saw with young people this summer, without any prompting from Michelle and myself," proud father and former president Barack Obama revealed in his 2020 cover story for People. "I could not have been prouder of them," he shared.
This wasn't the first time Malia Obama took a stand. Within a mere week of leaving the White House in 2017, Obama took her part in democracy by joining the Standing Rock solidarity event in Utah, a demonstration against the Dakota Access Pipeline Project. Her attendance at the protest was a welcome surprise to actress Shailene Woodley, who is a staunch activist against the Dakota Pipeline. "It was incredible [...] to witness a human being and a woman coming into her own outside of her family and outside of the attachments that this country has on her," the "Divergent" star told Democracy Now. "[S]omeone who's willing to participate in democracy because she chooses to, because she recognizes, regardless of her last name, that if she doesn't participate in democracy, there will be no world for her future children," she added.
She graduated from Harvard in 2021
Malia Obama attended Harvard in the fall of 2017, where she was set to study Visual and Environmental Studies. Dropping off Obama at her dorm was an emotional moment for her parents, but more so for her father. "I dropped off Malia at college, and I was saying to Joe and Jill [Biden] that it was a little bit like open-heart surgery, and I was proud that I did not cry in front of her," Barack Obama shared at the Beau Biden Foundation fundraiser in 2017.
However, her campus life ended sooner than expected due to COVID-19 in 2020. Malia had to move out of her college dorm and back to her parents' home to transition into remote learning. Though life in quarantine was admittedly a difficult time, it also gave the Obamas time to bond as a family. "To have this bonus time where your kids are having dinner with you every night and we're playing games and watching movies together — there's been a lot of joy to that," the former president shared in a cover story with People. Since the pandemic was still ongoing by the time she had graduated, Malia's graduation was held virtually. During her graduation, she was given special recognition for her screenplay "Yellow Light," which was awarded a Hoopes Prize. Receiving a Hoopes Prize proved her excellent work on the screenplay as an undergrad student, and she received a cash prize of $5,000 for it, too.
She was romantically linked to Rory Farquharson
A couple of months after entering the Ivy League school, she was spotted smooching a mystery man at a Harvard-Yale football game. Very shortly after the photos and videos were leaked, it was revealed that the mystery man was a fellow Harvard student named Rory Farquharson. Though they never publicly confirmed the relationship, Farquharson's swift deletion of his Instagram account following the reveal was enough confirmation. The new couple were also spotted multiple times together since then. Not a lot of inside details are known about the couple, but Barack Obama gave us all a little inside scoop in an episode of the "Bill Simmons Podcast." The former president revealed that Malia's British boyfriend came to live with them during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it appears that he made a good impression. "He's British, wonderful young man. And he was sort of stuck because there was a whole visa thing and he had a job set up, so we took him in and I didn't want to like him but he's a good kid."
It isn't quite a surprise that Farquharson made a good impression with the former president. According to a source from Rugby School, a private boarding school he attended from 2015 to 2016, he was popular and also known as "quite a catch" amongst the ladies (via Daily Mail).
She and her sister Sasha Obama share an apartment in Los Angeles
After transferring out of the University of Michigan, Malia Obama's sister, Sasha Obama was set to attend the University of Southern California. This meant that the Obama sisters would be based in the same city, as Malia Obama was working in Los Angeles. They decided to move in together, which is probably a testament to how close they've become since that wasn't always the case. "I was charmed by the fact that they'd chosen each other as roommates. It makes me happy to think we've raised siblings who [...] have also managed to be friends," their mother, Michelle Obama, wrote in her book "The Light We Carry." The Obama sisters slowly turned their apartment into a home with pieces they accumulated through yard sales and some budget-friendly visits to IKEA.
Once their parents were able to visit, they proudly hosted them for cocktails in their new home. They served up a charcuterie board along with what Michelle Obama described as bad martinis. "It was very weak, in at tumbling glass [...] it was mostly vermouth and ice. Well, maybe it wasn't even vermouth because I don't even think they knew that vermouth was in a martini," the former first lady joked on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." Bad martinis aside, Michelle is happy to see her children navigating life together. "To see them in that place when they're one another's support systems and they've got each other's backs — it's the thing a mother would want," she shared (via Today).
She worked alongside Donald Glover for his Amazon Prime series entitled 'Swarm'
After graduating from Harvard in 2021, Malia Obama got a job as a TV writer on the Amazon Prime series "Swarm." Following his success in the comedy-drama series "Atlanta," Donald Glover pitched the show "Swarm" to "Atlanta" writer and producer Janine Nabers. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Nabers pointed out that Obama's point of view was a great addition to the writer's room, as the leads of the show are also in their 20s. "She's an incredible writer and artist. We really wanted to give her the opportunity to get her feet wet in TV and see if this is something she wants to continue doing," the "Swarm" co-creator shared.
Aside from the hard work she was putting into her new job, her talent didn't go unnoticed. "I feel like she's just somebody who's gonna have really good things coming soon. Her writing style is great," Glover told Vanity Fair in 2022. Unlike her previous internships that had a hard time separating her from her title as the first daughter, the "Swarm" writer's room treats her like any other person. "We can't be easy on her just because she's the [former] president's daughter," Stephen Glover, co-writer and executive producer, explained to Vanity Fair. "She's very down to earth, and cool. So, it's not a problem at all. She has a lot of good ideas. She's great. She's just a regular person like everybody else."
Malia Obama made her directorial debut in 2023
It appears that the creative collaboration between Malia Obama and Donald Glover is going well. After working on "Swarm" together, Glover's creative studio and multimedia company, Gilga, announced that they were working on a short film by Obama. "The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once. You're Obama's daughter. So if you make a bad film, it will follow you around," he told GQ. While being Barack Obama's daughter has its perks and privileges, it also comes with immense pressure to do well. If the film flopped, it would be hard to live it down. It's probably the reason why she began to drop her last name in film credits once she graduated. In the credits of "Swarm," she went by her first and middle name, "Malia Ann."
There hasn't been a lot of publicity for the said short film, but gathering from what has been released thus far, the film is entitled "The Heart," a short film about a man dealing with the grief due to losing his mother. The film is going through the film festival circuit, having been shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023 and the Chicago Film Festival in October 2023. It is also slated for the short film lineup of the Sundance Film Festival 2024.