Michelle Obama’s Favorite ‘White Lotus’ Moment, and Other Revelations From Her Live Podcast

In front of a rapt Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival audience on Aug. 9, Michelle Obama co-hosted a live taping with her brother of their podcast IMO With Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. The former First Lady returned to the fest, where she and the former President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance in 2022 to support the Netflix documentary Descendant that they produced through their production company Higher Ground.

Pinch-hitting for advertised guest Teyana Taylor, who stars in the upcoming feature One Battle After Another with Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, and who cancelled due to unexpected vocal surgery, was The White Lotus Emmy-nominated Natasha Rothwell.

During the conversation, Obama shared a moment she particularly enjoyed about Rothwell’s twice Emmy-nominated role as Belinda. “Not only does Belinda get her groove thing on,” she said, “but one of my favorite scenes, because this is a luxury resort, [is] where you’re having tea or lunch by yourself, and you spot a Black couple. And most of us know when you’re doing something really nice somewhere, especially when you see other Black people,” — Obama indicated a look of acknowledgement of folks within the community — “yeah, and you got that, you know. I love that.”

Rothwell provided the backstory: “I pitched that to Mike [White, White Lotus creator]. He’s such a collaborative writer-director, and season one, we started working together because he’s very aware that he’s not a Black woman,” she explained. “When we were working on season three, I was like, ‘Mike, there has to be a moment where Belinda sees someone who looks like her, and almost seeing what’s possible for herself, because she’s there under work circumstances, but that couple’s there just for them. And so just to have that look make the cut, I was so thrilled,” she shared. “So many people bring that moment up because it’s just authentic for the experience.”

As the predominantly Black crowd co-signed her assertion, Obama added: “It tells a fuller story of what it means to be Black because we leisure, we travel, right? We leisure all up and down Martha’s Vineyard, don’t we? It’s a beautiful thing to see. We’ve got to make sure the rest of the world knows that we are traveled, and we do things besides serve other people,” she said to enthusiastic applause.

The trio swapped stories of their childhoods: Obama was a self-proclaimed introvert, Robinson “was always trying to be outside,” and Rothwell “an introverted extrovert” from a military family background whose service Obama thanked them for. Rothwell also discussed her parents’ happy 47-year-marriage, and shared that she is “childless by choice” and content with being single. Robinson asked, “Would anybody be upset if we introduced you to somebody?” Rothwell responded: “God is good!”

Obama shared how she tells her girls — Sasha and Malia — not to rush into marriage. “I’m trying to instill in my daughters right now that marriage should be a choice. And sometimes we send subliminal messages to our kids; they could be doing great things, and it’s like, ‘Well, are you dating anyone?,’” she offered as an example. “Or you could be conquering the world, and it’s like, ‘When are you going to have a baby?,’ all the while sending the message that who you are isn’t good enough until you are partnered or paired off.”

Emphasizing her love for her husband, despite various reports, Obama explained why she shares the difficulty of marriage. “I talk openly about it, not because I don’t love my husband. I’m happy to be married. We have a wonderful relationship, but [society] sometimes set young couples up,” she said. “What I don’t want young couples to do is walk away from the hard, because that’s just waiting for you.”

The companionable conversation covered what it was like for Rothwell as a junior writer on Insecure — “After the first writers’ room, I went to my car and sobbed because I felt so seen,” she recalled — as well as leading her award-winning series How To Die Alone as creator, writer, producer and star despite its cancellation. “I’m so grateful that the series saw the light of day, and it’s on Hulu,” she said of the show that took her eight years to make.

Obama also sought Rothwell’s advice for others, including her own daughter Malia, who feel compelled to share their voice in Hollywood: “I have a young creative child. I think a lot of young creatives, especially kids of color, with all that’s going on in the world, they wonder, ‘Is there still room for this?’”

Rothwell responded: “I think it’s so important for young creators to know that in their pocket is a phone that is a movie studio. Do not wait for someone else to give you permission to live your dream.”

“There’s still a lot of white space for really good, different, diverse stories. And I don’t care what we’re going through in the world, there’s always room for us to tell our stories,” Obama, a producer herself, noted before inquiring about the latest project Rothwell is developing, with which she was unfamiliar.

Rothwell admitted she was unfamiliar with the viral TikTok sensation, Who TF Did I Marry? by Reesa Teesa — who narrates the story of her marriage to a man she later learns is a pathological liar — until social media began attaching herself to the project, which she learned about on a 25-member family group text chain while she was in Thailand.

Later, when it became a viable Hollywood property, Rothwell was amazed that her fledgling production company Big Hattie Productions won it. “It was a six-way bidding war,” she said of the mega popular TikTok series. “There was like the Shondas and the Lee Daniels, everyone was throwing their hat in the ring, because to get 500 million people to sit down and watch something, Hollywood sits up and takes notice.”

Closing out the conversation, Obama circled back to Rothwell’s parents being thrilled that she was sitting down with her and her brother.  “Please tell your parents that you made them proud,” she said.