*Issa Rae has inked a 2-year first-look production deal with HBO which will see her develop diverse new programming for all of HBO’s platforms. The news comes ahead of the premiere of her new HBO series “Insecure,” which airs on Sunday, October 9, at 10:30pm.
Created by Issa Rae and Larry Wilmore, the eight-episode comedy stars Issa and Yvonne Orji as 2 friends navigating relationships, uncomfortable experiences and racy tribulations.
“I want to make this very clear,” Issa Rae says as she describes Insecure. “This is not the quintessential black-woman experience. It’s a very specific experience.”
Rae’s describes her character, also called Issa, as: “She’s me if I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
“I always talk about Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Rae says. “I’m not Jewish, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s [culturally] specific to that show that I didn’t get, that I had to look up! And that’s fine—I still enjoyed the show. I feel that way about our show.”
READ RELATED STORY: Issa Rae on ‘Insecure’: ‘We Made the Show We Wanted to Make’ [EUR Original]
As Deadline notes, “Insecure” features themes Rae tackled in her successful webseries, “The Misadventures Of Awkward Black Girl,” which won a Shorty Award. Rae’s online content has garnered over 20 million views and nearly 200,000 YouTube subscribers. She has made a number of lists, including Glamour’s “35 Under 35″, Forbes’ “30 Under 30” (twice), Rolling Stone’s 23 Funniest people in America and People magazine’s “One to Watch” list for 2015.
Rae told Time magazine that the possibility of being pulled back to a 9-to-5 job helps keep her motivated.
“I’m still, to a degree, scarred by the stuff I hated about working a 9-to-5,” Rae says. “Any time I feel like getting lazy or procrastinating in my current situation, I always think back to that. Bitch, do you want to still be at that 9-to-5? And I act right.”
Watch a new teaser for “Insecure” below:
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