Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama's oldest daughter, Malia, who is now a filmmaker, is facing "nepo baby" accusations after she chose to drop her last name professionally to be known as Malia Ann.
The former first daughter, whose middle name is Ann, used her new name while debuting her short film, "The Heart," during the Sundance Film Festival, reported Newsweek.
But it didn't take long for social media users to notice that the Harvard graduate was going by a different name and to start calling her a "nepo baby," or a person who uses their family's connections to become a success.
"Obama's daughter trying to sneak past Nepo baby discourse by not using her last name. Bro you are Obama's [daughter]," said an X post accompanying a screenshot of Malia Ann's Sundance clip, including her new professional name.
The post has been viewed more than 7 million times and was followed by another stating "if you wanna be a filmmaker that's cool, but we all know who you are, you're Obama's daughter. You can't hide that."
But there were also people responding to praise the filmmaker, with one person saying "I don't think she thinks people won't know she's [Obama's] daughter. I think she's just trying to have her own name in her field which I think is fine actually!!!"
But another user commented "We literally WATCHED MALIA GROW UP…There isn't even another famous 'Malia' out there. When I saw this vid on YouTube weeks ago, I took it as her stating her work is HERS, as an individual, and not her family's."
There have been several actors who have dropped their famous family names, including Nicholas Cage, who was a Coppola, and Angelina Jolie, who decided not to use her father, Jon Voight's last name, others pointed out.
The Obamas are also the parents of 22-year-old Sasha Obama.
While in her teens, Malia Ann interned on the CBS sci-fi series "Extant" and HBO hit "Girls," and after her father's second term in office ended in 2017, she was an intern in New York City, working in the office of the film studio that had been co-founded by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
She had worked in the company's production and development department but was there several months before Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment.
Malia Ann also worked on the writing team for Donald Glover's Amazon Prime miniseries Swarm, and he praised her in an interview as an "amazingly talented person" who will "have really good things coming soon. Her writing style is great."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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