“Insecure” available on HBO and HBO NOW. Merie W. Wallace/HBO
“Insecure” is such a Black show. From the cast to the soundtrack to the wardrobe choices and shooting locale—everything is Black. And if you look at Twitter on a Sunday night/Monday morning, you’ll see that the audience is Black as well.
But perhaps not as Black as you thought. During a recent question and answer session with Iris Brey, the two revealed that 62 percent of the audience is White.
Rae said, “That threw me all the way the f*ck off. Which is great. It makes me want to go back in time and find that person (who said) ‘No one’s interested in watching these shows about people of color. Even White people are tired of seeing White-people shows.”
And speaking of audience perspective, Issa also spoke about the amount of male nudity in the show.
“We’re telling the show through the female lens, the female gaze, which is pretty rare. There’s this male gaze we’ve always been subjected to, and this is an opportunity to reverse that.”
As a woman who has always wondered why we never got to see naked men, I appreciate her.
She also spoke about the importance of having writers in the room who represent various experiences.
“It’s been an amazing process. We argue a lot,” she said of the show’s writers. “We don’t want to tell the stories of people who aren’t in the room. If we’re telling a queer storyline, or this story about judging someone for having this kind of experience, [it’s important] that we have voices in the room who can speak to that as well, who can add to the argument.”
And during the sit down, she shared the impact Shonda Rhimes had on her career, as one of the women with whom she was in the process of developing a television show.
“She paved the way for so many of us,” Rae said of Rhimes. “Scandal,” starring Kerry Washington, “legitimized the online audience and the online voice in a completely different way. And so, yes, I definitely look to her for inspiration for just starting a movement.”
