Netflix is set to come out with a new documentary, this time about former First Lady Michelle Obama, called Becoming.
The documentary follows Obama on her blockbuster book tour but a notable aspect of the documentary is that it also draws attention to her bond with the Secret Service agent who has served as her bodyguard for more than a decade.
It’s certainly unfamiliar territory for someone who prefers to remain unnoticed, but Allen Taylor briefly appears in the spotlight in the documentary.
“Allen is more like a brother than he is an agent,” Obama, 56, says at one point in the film. “He was my first experience of having a detail — so that’s 12 years of a relationship, if not more.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the back of his head,” she jokes, as Taylor sits in the front seat of the car she’s riding.
While she doesn’t usually involve herself in the nitty-gritty of the security preparations that go into her public appearances, she always makes a point to ask questions.
“I always want to know where the guns are,” she wryly says. “What if somebody was really trying to take me out? They’d take these two out first. I could get us to safety, Allen. I got you covered. I’m always thinking.”
“I know you could. I’m very confident in that,” Taylor responds, laughing.
Taylor briefly reflects about his time protecting Obama.
“I’ve been working with Mrs. Obama since 2008,” he says. “Over that time, if you’re around the protectee, you get to know each other very well. The stakes are very high in this job, it’s a no-fail mission, so you have to get it right 100 percent of the time.”
Taylor says that one favorite moment that he recalls between him and Obama was at that time when her family took a trip to the Great Wall of China.
“It had been planned out that the girls would have the ability to take the slide down,” Taylor says. He was talking about former first daughters Malia and Sasha Obama who are both now in college.
“And when Mrs. Obama saw the slide, she became interested in wanting to do it as well,” he continues, then he holds up a framed photo that showed the two of them going down the slide. Obama looks like she’s having the time of her life while Taylor, not so much.
“As you can see, she’s smiling and I’m not smiling. But obviously it’s a very special photo,” he says. “It’s a fun photo. It’s actually one of my favorites. I always have to pinch myself and say, ‘Did I really experience all of that?’”
Replaced!