ISSA RAE: OWNING HER POWER


Over the years, Issa Rae has received numerous accolades for her work as a producer, actress, game-changer and activist. She is a three-time Black Reel Award winner, an NAACP Image Award winner, a three-time Primetime Emmy nominee, and a BET Award winner. We take a look at her life and career.


A vision board created from magazine pictures and headlines hangs on Issa Rae’s Los Angeles home-office wall. It was made nine years ago, during a period of unemployment. It features an HBO logo, the words ‘TV writer’, a desire to own a home with a pool, and to fall in love.



DEAR UNIVERSE
‘I created a vision board with my team members in the conference room of my downtown apartment and put it away,’ she captioned an Instagram post in December 2020. ‘I discovered it and framed it two years ago when moving, astonished at how much had come true,’ she adds. Admittedly, it looks like the vision board worked.

She has landed HBO deals, is an actress, TV writer and producer, and has fallen in love. She was recently announced as part of Twitter’s biggest celebrity campaign to date, alongside Megan Thee Stallion and Demi Lovato. The campaign encourages manifesting as a new year resolution and invites users to tweet their goals just like Issa and others did years ago. In less than a decade, she nailed a lifetime’s worth of visions – all this at the age of 37.

A PIECE OF ISSA
The Los Angeles-born Issa is known for keeping her personal life private. She acknowledges that she prefers to build boundaries between her job and personal life. ‘I believe that in the short time I’ve been in the industry, I’ve watched how many people who are front-facing lack peace, and that always bothered me,’ she explains in an interview with The Independent. She acknowledges, however, that this has not always been the case. ‘The more I started to seep out, the more I felt like people took ownership of me and my decisions and things that I did. That’s just not something that sat right with me, and I found that I don’t like to be the subject of conversations that I don’t initiate.’

Despite the fact that she knows there will be aspects of her life that must be made public, she has made the conscious decision to ‘be in charge of the narrative and select when and how to disclose those pieces’. On a Monday morning in July, she posted on Instagram that she had secretly married her partner Louis Diame in the South of France, surrounded by close friends and family. In the pictures she looks breathtaking in a custom Vera Wang ivory sweetheart strapless gown with a chapel-length ivory veil. ‘I still try to be private about my personal life, but that was something that I knew was going to be shared, and I just wanted to share it on my own terms,’ she says. ‘There’s something really nice about having a piece of me that no one knows about or can talk about except for the people who are part of my life,’ she said in an interview with Vanity Fair.



‘Self-care means having a separate, private space for me,’ she adds. While Issa admits to being a workaholic, she does spend time building relationships in her life. For example, she sets calendar reminders to text or call a friend or loved one. ‘It’s depressing to realise, ‘Oh, we really have to make an effort to see each other,’” she said about the challenges that come with navigating friendships in her mid-30s.

There’s something really nice about having a piece of me that no one knows about or no one can talk about except for the people who are part of my life.


SELF-CARE
Keeping personal boundaries is not the only way Issa practises self-care. In the pandemic’s early days spending a great deal of time at home, Issa’s favourite method of self-care was waking up as early as 4am to go on a walk alone. While on her walk, she listened to the news to stay informed about current events. According to her, journalling is something she also started and now does on a daily basis. ‘Waking up at four makes me feel like I have a window of time just for me. I think that’s my form of meditation because I don’t meditate,’ she adds.

THE BEGINNING
Morning walks are a recurring theme in Insecure, her semi-autobiographical HBO series about balancing love, friendship and self-discovery as a late 20-something. Issa, born Jo-Issa Rae Diop, was 26 years old in 2011 and disillusioned with her attempts to get into Hollywood. As a result, the Stanford University graduate launched a YouTube web series titled The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. Issa portrayed J, a young woman navigating the social awkwardness of her late adolescence.

The show soon accumulated millions of views and generated great enthusiasm, particularly among black women, who had been longing for characters who accurately and humorously depicted their lives. Awkward Black Girl’s success paved the way for her 2015 New York Times best-selling memoir of the same name, as well as for Insecure. The HBO dramedy, in which Issa stars was co-created with veteran writer Larry Wilmore, and has been consistently excellent over its five-season run. As the fifth season’s final episode wrapped up in December 2021, it gave Issa more free time to pursue her other interests.

Self-care means having a separate, private space for me




THE WORKAHOLIC

Issa has no plans to slow down anytime soon, evident in her growing celebrity status, hectic schedule, and fulfilling personal life. On the movies and television front, she will appear in the next Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequel. In addition, she just struck a five-year deal with HBO and parent company Warner Media in which the network has exclusive television rights to her projects.

Issa is also producing Rap Sh*t, a forthcoming HBO Max comedy series that chronicles the reunion of two high-school buddies who join a rap group. Then there’s another HBO Max project titled Sweet Life: Los Angeles, an unscripted series about gorgeous and driven 20-somethings living in the South of Los Angeles. The show recently premiered on the network.

There are also several other projects in development, including a relaunch of Project Greenlight, a reality show produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, that provided funding and support to young filmmakers. On the business front, Issa also recently announced that her company Raedio has secured a development contract with Audible’s digital audiobook and podcast platform. As part of the exclusive deal, Raedio will produce and curate audio content spanning multiple genres, including non-fiction and comedy.

If her current and previous work are any indication, we should expect to see a lot more of Issa.

SOME OF ISSA’S FAVOURITE THINGS:
  • Her favourite book is Waiting by Ha Jin.
  • The best birthday present she ever received was a surprise dinner with loved ones.
  • Her favourite holiday is Thanksgiving.
  • Give her hard-shell tacos and double-decker tacos from Taco Bell anytime – it’s her favourite fast food.
  • She enjoys unwinding in Malibu.
  • She loves falling asleep to ocean sounds.
  • The song she constantly plays in her car is ‘No Problem’ by Lil’ Scrappy.

FOLLOW ISSA
 @Issa Rae Presents
 @issarae
 @IssaRae



ISSA RAE: OWNING HER POWER ISSA RAE: OWNING HER POWER Reviewed by Michelle Pienaar on February 04, 2022 Rating: 5
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