Malia Obama Is Creating a Short Film…and People Have Thoughts About Donald Glover's Advice - Yahoo Life

Does this count as being a nepo baby? Malia Obama is the daughter of a popular former president, which is about as privileged as you can get. But she’s also blazing her own path in the world of entertainment, not politics. And now that she’s “creating” (directing? writing? starring in? unclear) her first short film, people have, let’s say, differing opinions on what the stakes for her are.

Ms. Obama, a Harvard graduate, kicked off her career with a summer internship on HBO’s Girls and was recently a writer on Donald Glover’s buzzy series Swarm. Since she doesn’t do interviews or social media, we don’t really know what her artistic POV is yet, but it seems she’s taking the business pretty seriously. And listen, is her relatively easy path fair? No. But if I had the same opportunities, would I take them without a second thought? Oh, hell yes.

Now Glover says the older Obama sister is going to “create” her first short film for his production company, Gilga. And the advice he gave her is…maybe not that applicable? In a new cover story for GQ, the Atlanta star said, “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.” Um…yes and no? On the one hand, Malia Obama certainly doesn’t have the ability to fail privately before breaking through with her first success, as many not-already-famous artists do. She definitely has only one chance to make her debut. On the other hand, she will definitely not ”only get to do this once.” Like, unless it’s the worst short film ever made, she’s gonna get plenty of chances. Also, like, the fact that she’s 24 with one internship and one writing credit and Donald Glover is her mentor…there are definitely perks to being Malia! I say this as someone totally rooting for her.

On Twitter, a number of people expressed doubt that this “advice” was really worth anything.

FWIW, Glover’s partner at Gilga told the publication, “Understanding somebody like Malia’s cachet means something. But we really wanted to make sure she could make what she wanted—even if it was a slow process…. It’s more about diversity of thought than just, like, diversity for optics. You know what I mean?” I do know what he means but not how it applies in this situation, TBQH. A president’s daughter is gonna have a pretty singular set of experiences to draw on no matter what, no?

It remains to be seen exactly what the young creator will be developing. Glover didn’t specify whether she’s writing or directing, just that she’s “creating” a short. Totally just my personal opinion, but if I were Donald Glover and I wanted to help Malia Obama make the very best first impression she could, I would…keep hiring her and also put her in touch with other artists she can learn from before she makes something on her own! She’ll probably be more confident and capable after a couple more years shadowing A-list creators. Or does he just want to scare her and also take credit for her first project(s)? Guess we’ll see when the short comes out.

Originally Appeared on Glamour

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