Marietta Girl Interviews President Obama During Netflix Series

MARIETTA, GA — When Cami Cortes was accepted as a Scholastic Kids Press student reporter last summer, she knew the program would provide her with the opportunity to hone her interviewing skills as an aspiring journalist.

What the 14-year-old Marietta teen didn’t expect, however, was landing in a Netflix special in which she and four other student news reporters interviewed former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama.

Cami, who will be a high school freshman this fall, joined the Obamas on an episode of a Netflix series that they are serving as executive producers of called “We The People.” The 10-episode series launched July 4 and teaches the basics of citizenship and the rights of an American through music from popular artists and animation.

Cami told Patch she learned of the opportunity to be part of an episode in which the Obamas explained the project and then answered questions from the five student reporters in late June, when she received an email gauging her interest in participating in the project.

The five students, ranging in age from 10-14, are among the 45 student reporters who are part of the Scholastic Kids Press program. On her bio, Cami lists being an astronaut as an alternative career goal along with being an investigative journalist.

“It was definitely my dream (to interview a former president), but I didn’t think it would ever happen,” Cami told Patch in a telephone interview on Thursday.

Cami, who attended middle school at Hightower Trail, said the idea of learning new information and then sharing it with people is what drives her to want to be a journalist.

On the Zoom interview with the Obamas, Cami and her fellow kid reporters submitted two questions — one of which they would be able to ask to the president. Cami said she conducts plenty of research into the subject matter before crafting questions. Over the past year, Cami has conducted interviews with a journalist and YouTubers as well as fishermen after a shark turned up at a local beach.

She called getting the chance to interview the former leader of the free world “surreal.”

In the video interview, Cami asked Obama what he hoped youngsters and teens would get out of the Netflix series. In the video, the Obamas discuss how the lessons in the “We The People” series remind them of the 1970s Saturday morning staple “Schoolhouse Rock!” in which animated shorts taught lessons on government and civics.

In response to the local teenager’s question, Obama stressed the importance for youngsters, like those who participated in the video, to know anything is possible if they are willing to work hard and dream big.

“The fact is that, ultimately, you guys (the young reporters) are the ones who are going to determine how the government works,” Obama said in the video. “We live in a democracy, and the way democracy is supposed to operate is that each of us has a vote, each of us has a chance to decide who’s going to represent us as a mayor, or as the governor, a member of Congress or the president, and each of us has the right to run for those offices.”

He added: “I want these films to communicate to (youngsters) how important you are and how important your voice is and how much power you have if you go out there and get involved and be confident that you have as much right and as much responsibility as anyone else to help make this country what it should be.”

She said she learned from the Obamas if she hopes to reach people, she has to figure out a way to connect and resonate with them, much in the same way as she established a connection with the former first couple. As she begins high school and considers a future in journalism, she said she will carry the president’s words with her.

While her dream was to interview Michelle Obama one day, she never imagined it would actually take place with the nation's 44th president — and at such a young age.

As of Thursday, two weeks after the taping of the episode and as the Scholastic Kids reporters program winds down, the fact Cami actually spoke to the president hasn’t sunk in.

“I’ve watched myself (on the show) a lot, and it’s really weird because it’s me, but it doesn’t feel like it was me,” Cami told Patch. “It felt so great many because (the Obamas) are these giant celebrities and people I’ve looked up to my whole life, and then I saw that they’re people themselves — they’re normal people with feelings and the way they talked to me. It was amazing.”