The comparisons to Girls creator Lena Dunham are hard to dodge for Issa Rae: a young, female writer-producer starring in her own comedic work- and relationship-oriented series. On HBO.
Dunham was unknown to viewers when Girls hit in 2012, having made an indie film and shorts. And like her network predecessor, Rae has been creating long before she got her own show.
Considering that Girls had a six-season run, Rae can take those comparisons as a complement.
In Certified Fresh new series Insecure, Rae stars as Issa Dee, a woman navigating dating and work life along with her friend Molly (Yvonne Orji). We got to know all about the actress-producer when she met with the Television Critics Association to preview Insecure. Here are eight things we learned about her.
Rae has been working for five years on her YouTube channel, which includes her first web series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, and other programming by “creators of color.” You could just fall down Rae’s YouTube rabbit hole now that there’s five years’ worth of shows, but The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl got the ball rolling within the first few episodes. Fortuitously, it got the attention of two people in the industry who helped Rae get an agent and manager. One was a celebrity.
“I remember during the third or fourth episode of my Web series, Awkward Black Girl, I got a tweet from Hannibal Buress,” Rae said. “[The tweet] was like, ‘Hey, I really like your stuff. My manager represents Donald Glover and Amy Poehler and stuff. Do you want me to put you in contact with them?’ And I was like, ‘Yes!’ And then he did. So now I’m at 3 Arts, and I’ve been with them since.”
For the agent, Rae’s series also happened to catch the attention of a former classmate with connections. “Around the same time, I had another friend I went to school with who was also watching the series and was working at UTA in the mailroom on his way up and helped introduce me to agents there.”
It would be a great story if Rae went right from web series to an HBO series, wouldn’t it? Of course, real life has a lot more trial and error than that. The success of Awkward Black Girl led to some development deals that never came to fruition. We’ll never see, for example, I Hate L.A. Dudes, which Rae pitched to Shonda Rhimes.
“In the past, networks haven’t outright said no to diversity,” Rae said. “That’s never happened. It’s been more just trying to convince people that people of color are relatable. It’s more about the content, and that’s where a lot of my journey has had some ups and downs. Like, OK, this isn’t a show exclusively about the struggle of being black. It’s not a hood story. It’s not any of those things. It’s just regular black people living life. HBO has been great about letting us cast who we want to cast, behind the scenes letting us hire who we want to hire, and even getting the amazing Prentice Penny, our showrunner, and [director] Melina [Matsoukas], who hadn’t had the [television] experience before, but has been killing it in music videos and killed it with this.”
Perhaps fans of Rae’s YouTube work have seen some of her musical shows. In the series premiere of Insecure, viewers will be treated to a rap about “broken p****.” A lot of Rae’s musical tastes will be on Insecure, both the music she likes and the music she sings.
“There’s definitely a lot of amazing music throughout the series,” Rae said. “You know, we have Solange [Knowles] as our amazing music consultant and Kier [Lehman], our music supervisor. Raphael Saadiq is doing the score for us. And as far as the characters’ raps are concerned, those will be featured throughout the series.”
God bless kids. They have no filter. So when they ask Rae why she’s trying to sound “like a white lady,” Rae has to confront it. It’s also the very first scene of the show and it represents Rae’s real frustrations about stereotypes in a multicultural world.
“It’s just a notion that there’s, like, a universal way to be black,” Rae said. “It’s been portrayed throughout media over the years, and it’s been kind of accepted by mainstream media and even in other shows, like this signature way to be black. There’s always a question: What does that mean if you are not that? Does that mean that I’m not black, or does that mean that I don’t fit into this box? And then, what does it mean when other people who are also black question your blackness? I always find the humor in that because you can’t escape being black. It’s on your skin. The opening scene is really a reflection and a representation of what the show represents. What does it mean when you don’t fit into this definition of being black? What does it mean when you don’t fit into the specific categories? And how do you continue?”
It’s not TV. It’s HBO. And Game of Thrones made it OK to show naked dudes on HBO. Rae likes that.
“We just wanted to flip the script a little bit, and there’s always an expectation that we just have to be titties-and-ass out,” Rae said. “I think with this we had an opportunity with two female leads to be like, ‘OK. There’s going to be a lot of sex in the show. Our guys are game. So let’s just have them bear it all.’ And they did. They were great about it.”
Another cliché of television is women sniping and backstabbing each other. That’s not Rae’s experience with her friends. Issa and Molly’s friendship in the show is more like Rae’s real friendships. They can have a tiff when they go out, but at the end of the night, they’re still there for each other.
“I just wanted to represent a purely authentic friendship,” Rae said. “It’s based off of real friends that I have and came about also during a time when [I was] watching a lot of reality shows and seeing black women pitted against each other and fighting and throwing chairs at each other. It’s just, like, none of my friends and I do that. I’ve never thrown a chair at my friend. I wanted to represent that. Yes, I fight with my friends, and we speak to each other in a specific way, but we love each other and we’re there for each other. I think we wanted to portray just authentic black female friendship at its purist, and hopefully we succeeded.”
If you’re not from Los Angeles, you might think Beverly Hills and Hollywood are the entire city. If you’ve ever tried to drive in L.A., you know it’s a lot more complicated. Rae herself is from Inglewood and she wants to show that part of L.A. on Insecure.
“L.A. was very important,” Rae said. “South L.A. was even more important, I think. Inglewood is featured prominently throughout the series, and it’s an area where Prentice and I both grew up. It’s an area that in classic television and film has been portrayed as gang-riddled and violence-laden. In the same way that Entourage made Hollywood and Beverly Hills and sort of northern L.A. sexy, we want to do the same thing with Southern L.A., because it’s just so rich with culture. It’s extremely diverse, and it’s something that we know well and want to present in the best light possible.”
Insecure is not just a clever name for a show. Rae really is insecure. You might think someone who’s produced shows for five years and is launching a new series has confidence, but Rae is just like all of us.
“I fooled you,” she joked. “I’m confident in my insecurities. I know what my flaws are.”
Insecure premieres Sunday, October 9 at 10:30 on HBO
