Issa Rae

Jo-Issa Rae Diop, known professionally as Issa Rae, is an American actress, writer, and producer. She gained widespread recognition as the co-creator, co-writer, and star of the HBO comedy series Insecure, which ran from 2016 to 2021. For her work on the show, she earned nominations for multiple Golden Globe Awards and Primetime Emmy Awards.

Rae was born in Los Angeles, California, to a pediatrician father from Senegal and a teacher mother from Louisiana. During her childhood, her family lived in Dakar, Senegal, and Potomac, Maryland, before settling in Los Angeles. She attended King Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science, where she began acting, and graduated from Stanford University in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in African and African-American Studies. In college, she created plays, music videos, and a mock reality series. Following graduation, she received a theater fellowship at The Public Theater in New York City and took classes at the New York Film Academy.

Rae first garnered major attention through her YouTube web series Awkward Black Girl, which premiered in 2011. The series went viral and was funded in part through a Kickstarter campaign before partnering with Pharrell's iamOTHER channel for its second season. The show won a Shorty Award for Best Web Show in 2013. Rae created the series to address what she viewed as limiting Hollywood stereotypes of African-American women. She subsequently expanded her content on YouTube and launched the podcast Fruit in 2016.

In 2013, Rae began developing the comedy series Insecure alongside Larry Wilmore. HBO greenlit the project, which premiered in 2016 and received critical acclaim across its five seasons. In 2017, the American Film Institute selected Insecure as one of the top ten television programs of the year, and the series received a Peabody Award in 2018.

Rae has also appeared in several feature films, including The Hate U Give, Little, The Photograph, The Lovebirds, Vengeance, Barbie, and American Fiction. Her voice acting credits include the short film Hair Love and the animated feature Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Beyond acting, Rae published a best-selling memoir, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, in 2015. She formed Hoorae Media in 2020, launched the record label Raedio in 2019, and is a co-owner of Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen.

In her personal life, Rae married businessman Louis Diame in France in July 2021. Throughout her career, she has received numerous honors, including placement on the Time 100 list in 2018 and 2022, as well as the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She has been awarded the Peabody Trailblazer Award and the Producers Guild of America Visionary Award, and she actively engages in civil rights advocacy with organizations such as the ACLU, BLD PWR, and Black Lives Matter.