It’s an incredibly exciting thing to watch the emergence of new on-screen talent whose charisma and star quality cannot be denied. It’s difficult to describe clearly, but it’s clear to a watchful viewer when it happens. Such is the case with Issa Rae, star and co-creator of the new HBO comedy “Insecure” set to debut next month (the pilot episode is already available online via HBO Now). The series, which is co-created by Larry Wilmore (formerly of “The Daily Show”) announces Rae as a force to be reckoned with, both in front of and behind the camera.
The show is, in some ways, an extension of Rae’s 2011 web series “The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl”...
The YouTube series garnered the attention of producers who responded to Rae’s unique voice and the web series’ humor and polish (especially compared to many other web series at the time). Rae, a Stanford and New York Film Academy graduate was actually trying to choose between attending law school or business school when “Awkward Black Girl’s” popularity exploded and her path became clearer. The abridged version is a book deal (which led to the release of her 2015 book “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl”), the creation of her own YouTube channel which gives voice and platform to filmmakers of color and now a series on HBO which is already garnering critical acclaim ahead of its broadcast premiere. In the age of self-funded content creation and everyone having a camera in their pocket, it’s the ultimate success story where true talent propels a former Hollywood outsider to what will surely be fame and further accolades.
Watching just the premiere of “Insecure,” it’s easy to understand why. The show follows Issa Dee (Rae), a youth non-profit employee living in Los Angeles—a Los Angeles populated by a diverse array of faces in a way that actually reflects reality—navigating work, love, sex and adulthood. I know, I know. There’s not exactly a shortage of narratives, both in film and on television, centered around general twenty-something angst and little else. We all know the titles and I won’t name them here because to do so is a disservice to “Insecure,” which is so unique in terms of its tone, execution, texture, its frankness about sex and yes its portrayal of young black women. In spirit, it hearkens back to “Living Single” and “Girlfriends” (two four camera sitcoms about black women) but adds a level of sophistication and a cinematic sheen to this narrative about something we almost never get to see on screen—the inner life of a black woman.
Yvonne Orji and Issa Rae in "Insecure"
Particularly striking is “Insecure’s” depiction of black female friendship. Natural, short cropped-haired Issa’s best friend Molly (hilarious and winning newcomer Yvonne Orji) appears in many ways her opposite, with her corporate job and her long flowing hair. I will admit that I was expecting these two incarnations of black womanhood to rub up against each other ideologically in ways that would have been totally valid and true to life, if somewhat well-worn territory. What Rae’s script gives us instead is something deeper and much more specific to these two women who love and accept each other in a way that’s free of ponderous judgment or editorializing about who is “better,” who is more virtuous, more insecure. Both Issa and Molly are indeed insecure, for different reasons that are a delight and also deeply emotionally wrenching to witness and watching the evolution of that relationship might be the most exciting thing to recommend a series that has a lot of things to recommend it.
Rae stated that she initially created “Awkward Black Girl” because she wasn’t satisfied with the portrayals of black women in film and television. They didn’t speak to her, so she decided to create her own narrative—one that reflected her and many of the black women she knows who she never felt like she saw on screen. Millennial anxiety narratives (let’s call it that) are usually given such a white face, like most things. For as much hay is made about how racism or racial bias diminishes as the generations get younger, there is still a great deal of homogeneity, not just in terms of creators but in terms of very notions about what kinds of people can fit into what narratives. Despite its title, “Insecure” and Issa Rae very confidently knock down a lot of those barriers.
"Insecure" premieres on HBO on October 9th. The pilot is currently available on HBO GO and HBO NOW