Malia Obama was propelled to household name status in 2008 when her father became the president of the United States, but things haven’t always been smooth sailing for the former first daughter. In fact, from her pre-teen years to her professional life, Malia has faced a ton of hurdles over the years — some of which have even prompted her to make big changes.
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We’ll start with those pre-teen years. Malia was just 10 when she moved into the White House, and at first, she was spared from too much media attention. Sadly, though, that changed in 2010. Just over a month shy of her 12th birthday, Barack and Michelle Obama’s eldest daughter found herself on the receiving end of a very disturbing bit by shady former Fox News anchor Glenn Beck. For context, Beck had been responding to a comment Barack had made in a speech about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The comment? “I’m shaving, and Malia knocks on my bathroom door and she peeks in her head and she says, ‘Did you plug the hole yet, daddy?'” (via CBS News). Cue, Beck’s ire. He not only impersonated Malia’s voice in an exceptionally creepy and infantilized way, but he also directly attacked both her and her sister. “That’s the level of their education, that they’re coming to ‘Daddy’ and saying, ‘Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?'” he ranted, chuckling at what he clearly believed to be peak comedy. Beck also made quips about Malia asking her father if he hated Black people.
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Understandably, Beck got a ton of backlash, and he ended up apologizing, claiming that he was trying to criticize Barack for including the comment about her in his speech. “It was a stupid mistake and I apologize and as a dad I should have known better,” he said (via Inside Edition). Well, yes.
Malia Obama’s college tour became front-page news
There’s always bound to be interest in where presidents’ kids decide to go to college (hello, the months-long speculation over Barron Trump’s choice). However, sadly for Malia Obama, her 2015 college tour ended up making headlines when pictures of her at Brown University began doing the rounds on social media. One of the pics that got people particularly riled up showed Malia next to what seemed to be a beer pong table — and the fact that some students who had posted to X (then known as Twitter) claimed she had been playing the game only added to all the drama.
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Granted, rather than a ton of backlash, Malia’s leaked on-campus antics were treated with sympathy for the most part. In fact, the editors of The Brown Daily Herald even issued an apology on behalf of everyone involved. The editorial, titled “Sorry, Malia Obama,” pointed out that most of the students whose social media posts made the news had never even thought about their content potentially being discovered by anyone other than their regular followers, and that it had been pure excitement driving them. Nevertheless, they noted, “It is a shame that Malia was unable to visit Brown and enjoy herself at a party without several news headlines coming out about it the next day. … It is likely that few of us would enjoy having strangers take pictures of us while we were unaware and post about them on the internet.”
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The Brown Daily Herald’s editors concluded that Malia would probably not be comfortable going to Brown in light of the situation, and it’s possible they were right. After all, the former first daughter famously went to Harvard, instead.
She was accused of smoking too much marijuana
A year after the Brown University debacle, Malia Obama was pictured in a party setting once again. This time, though, she made headlines for allegedly smoking marijuana at Lollapalooza.
It bears mentioning that it was never officially verified that Malia was smoking pot. Though she was filmed smoking something, the possibility that it was marijuana was based solely on a source who told Radar that they could smell it. Of course, some outlets tried to insinuate that Malia’s priorities were out of whack by noting that at the time the video was taken, she instead could have been at the Democratic National Convention, cheering Hillary Clinton on (aka every teenager trying to avoid attention’s number one idea of a good time). However, other than that, details on Malia’s Lollapalooza activities were scant.
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Unfortunately, a month after the video did the rounds, Malia was hit with another round of criticism. This time, a snap of Malia in the same room with what seemed to be a bong began circulating — and soon after, a “friend” told Radar that the first daughter had indeed used it … and then some. “Her friends are concerned for her. … Malia has a problem and it’s not going to go away without some professional help,” the source claimed. They added that Malia needed to be put into a rehab facility or program — something they viewed as “critical and definitely would not be an overreaction.” As with the Lollapalooza debacle, nothing ever came of the pic. TBD if the insider who spoke with Radar was indeed a friend of Malia’s, and if so, if the friendship continued.
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Malia was owed money by Harvey Weinstein
Here’s a surprising detail you may have missed in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that first broke in 2017: the disgraced movie mogul owed Malia Obama money. Not a ton, mind, but given her independence, we wouldn’t rule out the possibility that she felt a type of way about it.
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As some may recall, early 2017 saw Page Six reveal that Malia would be interning at The Weinstein Co. TMZ later confirmed Malia’s specific role, revealing that she was a script reader on the production team. Not much else emerged about her time at the company, though several months down the line, once the internship had wrapped up, the Weinstein scandal erupted. In the months following that, in addition to Weinstein being fired from his company and resigning from it’s board of directors, the business went bankrupt. Enter, a report from Deadline, which revealed that Malia was among a number of people the company had not yet paid.
Like we said, since Malia was an intern, it’s likely the amount owed wasn’t that much, especially compared to some of the other names who also hadn’t been paid yet, like Robert De Niro and Michael Bay. Even so, considering just how much emphasis Michelle and Barack Obama have always placed on their children making their own way — and the fact that Michelle shared in an episode of “Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson” that both of her kids wanted to establish themselves without cashing in on their family name — missing out on those wages must have been incredibly frustrating. Then again, having her name linked to Weinstein post-scandal was probably infinitely more infuriating for the low-profile Malia.
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Malia was slammed as a nepo baby
The Weinstein Co. wasn’t the only internship Malia Obama had. Au contraire, she’d also been an intern on “Girls” while she was still in high school, so she’s been working towards her film and TV career for a long time. However, some naysayers have continued to hit her hard with the nepo baby discourse.
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Now, there’s no question that Malia’s parents being who they are played a role in some of her first gigs. After all, when news of Malia’s “Girls” internship broke, an insider told Us Weekly that Malia had met Lena Dunham while she was at the White House, so having a dad as the president certainly opened a major door for her. That being said, we’ll hearken back to what Barack and Michelle Obama have always said about making sure their daughters knew they’d have to work for everything they got. Prior to the 2008 election, Barack told People that their chief goal as parents was to make sure their kids stayed grounded and didn’t start feeling superior to anyone because of their dad’s candidacy. In the same interview, Michelle also pointed out that even when they did inevitably get special attention, she went out of her way to get them back into normalcy. “That’s nice for a day or two, but they need to go back home, just so they realize that this isn’t life,” she’d told the outlet.
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Evidently, that worked back in the day, with Barack telling People he’d been impressed by just how unaffected Malia and Sasha Obama were by their new circumstances. Years later, it seems that’s stayed the same, with Michelle sharing on “Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson,” “They don’t want people to assume that they don’t work hard. … They’re very sensitive to that.”
Malia felt a need to change her name
Given Malia Obama’s desire to carve out her own career, it’s no surprise that all the nepo baby accusations frustrated Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s eldest child. Nor, for that matter, was her response all that much of a shock. As many know, Malia goes by a different name in her career, and she’s billed as Malia Ann in the productions she’s worked on. Sadly, even that hasn’t quieted all the haters, and at one point, even Whoopi Goldberg had to come to Malia’s defense, reminding people that a bunch of Hollywood personalities had changed their names.
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As for Malia’s parents, they’ve both spoken about their daughter’s decision, and both have pointed out that she’s been adamant about doing her thing without any added attention purely because of who she is. Speaking in an episode of “The Pivot Podcast,” Barack explained, “I was all like, ‘You do know they’ll know who you are, right?’ And she’s all like, ‘You know what, I want them to watch it that first time and not in any way have that association.'” It was almost exactly what Michelle said on “Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson”: “Her first project, she took off her last name, and we were like, ‘They’re still going to know it’s you, Malia,’ but we respected the fact that she’s trying to make her way.”
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Of course, there will always be those who try to find a way to discredit Malia’s accomplishments, and she probably knows that better than anyone. However, at the end of the day, she can’t choose her parents any more than her colleagues whose families don’t have famous last names, and it’s admirable that she’s so committed to making a name for herself.
