Michelle Obama breaks silence on Malia dropping last name

Former first lady Michelle Obama is opening up about her eldest daughter Malia's decision to drop her famous last name on her first film project.

"It is very important for my kids to feel like they've earned what they are getting in the world," the former first lady said of her daughters with former President Obama, 26-year-old Malia and 23-year-old Sasha, in an episode of the "Sibling Revelry" podcast released this week.

"They don't want people to assume that they don't work hard, that they're just naturally just handed things. They're very sensitive to that," Michelle Obama said.

"Malia, who started in film — I mean, her first project, she took off her last name," she recalled. 

Malia Obama was credited in her 2023 short film, "The Heart," using her first and middle names "Malia Ann."

"We were like, 'They're still going to know it's you, Malia,'" Michelle Obama quipped to the podcast's co-hosts Kate and Oliver Hudson.

"But we respected the fact that she's trying to make her way," she said in the joint interview with her brother, Craig Robinson.

"They want to be their own people," the former first lady said, adding that as her daughters have gotten older, they're "embracing our parenting principles."

"They have a clear understanding of why we did a lot of what we did," she said of her children, who spent some of their childhood growing up in the executive mansion.

"They didn't want to be little princesses in the White House — they wanted to push the envelope," Obama said.

"They needed some rope. They wanted to try some things. They wanted to be out in the world," she continued.

"And I knew that under the circumstances, they needed to have more rope than I probably would have given them if I were my mother," Obama said.