“People are tired of mainstream media’s limited and confined portrayal of people of color.” ~ Issa Rae, Actress
Summary: Issa Rae isa unique and funny YouTube personality who developed television series with Shonda Rhimes for ABC and Larry Wilmore for HBO. She received national attention from top media outlets like The New York Times, CNN, Rolling Stone, and ELLE. She won the 2012 Shorty Award for Best Web Show for her series Awkward Black Girl, in addiiton to making Glamour Magazine’s “35 Under 35” list in 2013 and the Forbes “30 Under 30” list in both 2013 and 2014. In 2015, Rae released the memoir The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.
Nationality: African-American
Industry: Entertainment
Q: You’ve said you haven’t seen a TV show starring a black woman you could relate to since the late 1990s? on npr.org
A: Back then, I was living in Maryland and pop singer Brandy Norwood was playing a teen living in South Central Los Angeles in the sitcom Moesha. I think Moesha is the last show where I remember [thinking] “Oh, this is just a regular black girl. She was in the Leimert Park [neighborhood], she was going to high school; she was like a regular girl. I moved back to LA and went to a taping of that show and had a script and used that script as the format for all my other scripts.”
