Tracee Ellis Ross Explains How Barack Obama "Failed" His "One Job" as a Friend Meg WaltersAugust 18, 2025 at 6:23 PM Getty Images The Gist Tracee Ellis Ross joked that former President Barack Obama "failed as a friend" when he didn't warn her about a man she was dating.
- - Tracee Ellis Ross Explains How Barack Obama "Failed" His "One Job" as a Friend
Meg WaltersAugust 18, 2025 at 6:23 PM
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The Gist -
Tracee Ellis Ross joked that former President Barack Obama "failed as a friend" when he didn't warn her about a man she was dating.
"Like, it was your job to say that before, you know what I mean?" she told Jimmy Kimmel.
Ross is a long-time friend of Barack and his wife Michelle Obama.
Actress Tracee Ellis Ross has her fair share of impressive famous friends—but apparently, that doesn't make her any less susceptible to bad dates. In fact, in a recent interview, she explained how one of her most intuitive, influential friends actually "failed" to stop her from beginning a doomed relationship. Which friend was that, you might ask? None other than former President Barack Obama.
"I broke up with someone, and I remember running into the former president and he was like, 'I could have told you that,'" Ross recalled during an August 14 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. "And I was like, 'Well, you failed as a friend!' Like, it was your job to say that before, you know what I mean?" she continued, explaining that she always prefers her friends to speak up when they see things in her romantic relationships that she might miss. "Like, nip it in the bud."
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Ross recounted how Obama "failed as a friend"
Later during the talk show appearance, Ross revealed that there might be some ways the former first family could help her with her dating life. "I've never asked Michelle [Obama] to set me up, which I think perhaps is dumb and I need to get on that," she said.
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Ross and Michelle Obama are good friends
Ross and the Obamas are long-time friends. Back in 2022, Michelle made a cameo on Ross's show Black-ish. At the time, Ross explained to Jimmy Fallon that despite their friendship, she still tried to keep things respectful. "I was raised in the generation where your teachers and your friends' parents are Mr and Mrs. So, in public she's Mrs Obama, former First Lady," she said. "There's no question. I was calling her that also as my friend." Apparently, she even kept up the formality when Michelle asked her to call her by her first name.
Michelle and Ross have appeared together at several events, appearing on stage together at The United State Of Women Summit in 2018 and Michelle's book tour the same year.
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Michelle and Ross at The United State of Women Summit 2018
This April, Ross was also a guest on Michelle's podcast "IMO." During that conversation, Ross revealed that she only dates younger men because "a lot of men my age are steeped in a toxic masculinity and have been raised in a culture where there is a particular way that a relationship looks," as she put it on the show. "Anything that starts to smell of that for me—I did enough of it where I was controlled and felt like I was a possession or a prize."
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