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Issa Rae has a number of projects coming down the pipeline for HBO, including Season 3 of Insecure, a project with author Angela Flournoy called Sweet Life, and Him or Her, which centers around the dating life of a Black man who identifies as bisexual.
The latter project received quite a bit of blowback from Black men on Twitter, with Rae being called a traitor to her race, an Illuminati member, among other negative things for choosing to tell such a story. She responded with sarcasm to the criticisms:
But in an interview with Deadline where she was asked about the initial response to the series, Rae said that the negativity, coming well before anyone has seen Him or Her, really pissed her off.
“I remember just being pissed all day,” she said. “Sometimes you live in a bubble, you live in a liberal bubble where you think that everyone is open, and in my eyes progressive in a way where there are so many human experiences, black experiences, gender experiences. There are so many stories to tell. The fear that a story like that would be told when it’s the story of so many other people is just absolutely ridiculous. The censorship and the idea that black men can’t be all things and still be black men is just absurd, it is. Telling all types of stories, straight, gay, trans, whatever it is. It’s not an experience that I have. But, I want to see all kinds of stories. We’re just scratching the surface, and there’s plenty of voices beyond me that are going to do that anyway.”
And the person who will be helping Rae tell this particularly complex story about sexual fluidity, is writer Travon Free, who is bisexual. Interesting enough, the Season 1 episode of Insecure where Molly’s boo of the moment, Jared, revealed to her that he had a same-sex experience in the past, inspired Free to come to her with the idea for Him or Her.
“Travon Free—the writer, the creator of the project—approached us with it. And he said that episode of Insecure was a first time that he had felt like his story was being told in a way. And that conversation reflected so much of his personal experience,” she said. “I think it was something that he’d been working on for a while, but I think that episode was just, ‘Oh, I’ve got to get this story out there.’ And so it coincided with, we were looking for fresh voices, and he pitched that and it really excited me, because I’ve just never seen anything on TV like that. I’m just rooting for his show and he’s still working on it. It’s still very early.”
Rae is excited about the story that will be told, and we can’t wait to see it!
