Trending 9th February 2017 by Paula Lyne

Here’s How Malia Obama’s Internship On The Girls Set Really Turned Out

malia-obama

Malia Obama has done a very successful job of maintaining some sense of normal teenage life over the last few years, despite finishing up high school around the same time as her dad finished up his second term as President of the United States.

The 18-year-old is currently on a gap year before heading to Harvard this September, but she’s not exactly kicking back and relaxing. Prior to her internship at Harvey Weinstein’s New York HQ this spring and her United Nations internship in Madrid last summer, the teen completed a summer internship at HBO in 2015. While there, she spent a few days each week on the set of Girls.

Given Malia’s constant Secret Service protection detail, it’s not surprising that there was scant information about how she fared. Now that she’s no longer the daughter of a man in office though, we’ve become privy to some details, courtesy of Lena Dunham and her co-writer Jenni Konner.

The pair spoke to Howard Stern while on the promo trail for the final season of Girls, and had no problem discussing how Malia got on. Before you go thinking you’re in for some juicy gossip though, we’ll burst your bubble. In Lena’s words, Malia was an “angel” intern.


“She loved the show, and I mean, obviously we weren’t, like, making her go get our coffee,” Lena recalled. “You’re not going to send [Malia Obama to get coffee]. But she wanted to do all the jobs. That was the cool thing. She was totally enthusiastic.”

Rather than just being relegated to the filing room, Malia’s role was actually pretty key to the running of the show.

“We were sort of training her to do what our writer’s assistant did,” Jenni explained. “There’s a job where you sit on the set and – we do a lot of improv – so you take down the improv so we can get it in the next shot. We had one of our people who did that train her to do that.”

As well as being a hardworker, Malia also has smarts, at least according to Lena.

“She is so smart,” the actress said. “I once asked her, ‘What’s your favourite movie?’ and she was like, ‘Well, do you want me to list by my favourite director, actor, or cinematographer?’ And I was like, ‘You are smarter than me, let’s just be done with that.'”

Sounds like the eldest Obama daughter has a very successful road ahead!

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