Malia Obama seen out and about with Stanford grad
Former first daughter Malia Obama, who’s living in New York while she completes an internship with megaproducer Harvey Weinstein, has been spotted out and about in the company of a tall, handsome young man who has been identified as Rob Franklin, a 2015 graduate of Stanford University, TMZ is reporting.
Franklin’s LinkedIn page shows that he works “The Cabin In The Woods” writer Joss Whedon is in the running to write, direct and produce the Warner Bros. film “Batgirl.” in media for a New York startup. Franklin previously put in multimedia internships at BuzzFeed, NPR and, more locally, in Half Moon Bay.
Franklin’s circle of friends told TMZ that the 23-year-old and Malia, 18, met at New York Fashion Week and acknowledge that the two have been hanging out together.
Paparazzi spotted them in SoHo on Wednesday night with one or more friends, TMZ said.
But Franklin’s friends all say that he and the daughter of Barack and Michelle Obama are just friends and that the association is “strictly platonic.”
In any case, Malia and Franklin appear to have lots in common, notably professional interests in the arts and media.
Malia spent some of summer 2015 assisting crew members on the set of HBO’s “Girls,” and reportedly had a similar gig on the set of Halle Berry’s sci-fi drama “Extant” the previous year, according to Vanity Fair.
This fall, she heads to Harvard.