Issa Rae Talks Disrupting Hollywood’s Status Quo
Actress, TV producer and screenwriter Issa Rae is currently gracing the cover of Who What Wear. The creator of HBO’s Insecure is on the cover of the publication with her hair pulled back into a simple bun, wearing diamond heart-shaped earrings with a ton of light pink feathers up to her neck.
The spread from the magazine’s shoot showcases Rae’s beauty. However, the multi-hyphenate has something to say during her interview.
“I want to try different things and see what I can do,” the star of the forthcoming films The Photograph and The Lovebirds muses. “I don’t want to just play myself, so I want to be able to experiment. Some of the things that I have on the slate to actually act in are very different. I don’t want to get caught in a comfort zone. I don’t want anybody to be able to put me in a box.”
Rae stars in The Photograph, a romantic drama, alongside LaKeith Stanfield (Get Out, Uncut Gems). The Lovebirds is a romantic comedy, which isn’t too far from Rae’s role on her show Insecure.
“I think people are just expecting me to be funny, and the character just lost her mom, so she’s going through it. Obviously, there are elements of humor within the movie, but that’s not the driving part of the character, which is new for me because I do lean on humor,” Rae explains.
“It’s been a defense mechanism for a lot of my life. That’s my go-to, I guess, because my comfort zone is humor. So to not be able to lean on that in this film was interesting.”
In the interview, Rae talked about how she wears many hats, including being a coffee shop owner and record label owner. She also shared how she’s most comfortable working behind the scenes and helping others.
“Since 2014, we’ve been discovering underrepresented writers and giving them various platforms or helping them get staffed, helping them get representation,” Rae said. “And we’ve had so much success there just in terms of putting them on the radar for the industry. Getting them representation is no small feat so that they can get more jobs. That’s what I ultimately want my legacy to be.”
