We’ve seen many A-lister kids go through this name dilemma: some decided to keep their family’s famous last name, while others decided to ditch it. It’s up to each person, and both have pros and cons to them. Recently, we saw that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s daughter Suri Cruise dropped her last name from her stage name at her school’s play. And now, many are noticing that Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s elder daughter, Malia, dropped the “Obama” from her name.
As many know by now, Malia made a super-rare public appearance on the red carpet for Sundance Film Festival’s Short Film Program, on Jan 19. If you’re wondering why she was in attendance, it was because the short film she wrote and directed, called The Heart, was premiering.
The Heart is an 18-minute comedy-drama film that illuminates a “complex relationship between a mother and her son” when unexpected events happen, according to IMDb.
And if you look closely, you see Malia is noted as “Malia Ann” in the credits. And she was featured as such throughout the events:
Many wondered, “Why would she drop Obama from her name?” Well, a previous interview with her mentor Donald Glover may shed some light on it. In a previous interview with GQ, he talked to her about working in the film industry as a former First Daughter. “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 said.
So it could be a creative choice, something to give her security, or something as simple as she just loves her middle name! No matter the reasoning, we think her name rocks and we can’t wait to see more of what she does in the film and TV industry.
Before you go, click here to see the best photos of Malia Obama.
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