The eldest daughter of former President Barack Obama and FLOTUS Michelle Obama, Malia Obama, just landed an impressive new job in Hollywood. In a new GQ interview, Donald Glover confirmed that Malia is “creating” a short film with his newly minted production company, Gilga.
Glover’s longtime collaborator and creative partner at Gilga, Fam Udeorji 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.” The plot remains under-wraps and it has not yet been confirmed if Malia will also direct the project.
Malia got her start with Glover in the writer’s room for his new Amazon Prime Video series, Swarm, which took the internet by storm after debuting on March 17. Malia had a writing credit on the show’s fifth episode entitled, “Girl Bye,” with series co-creator Janine Nabers.
Glover has taken Malia under his wing, mentoring her. “The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once,” Glover said. “You’re Obama’s daughter. So, if you make a bad film, it will follow you around.”
It seems production runs in the Obama family following their departure from office in 2016. Barack and Michelle Obama signed a deal in 2018 to produce a series of film and television shows for Netflix. Michelle also launched a podcast.
Glover signed a massive eight-figure deal with Amazon in 2021 after leaving his role at FX. Known as Childish Gambino in his music career, the multi-hyphenate has a new series adaptation of the 2005 Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie action film Mr. & Mrs. Smith coming out this year that he is both producing and starring in with The Batman’s Paul Dano and I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel.
The first season of Swarm is currently available to stream on Prime Video.
