ISSA
RAE

Issa Rae was born in Los Angeles on 12 January 1985 and graduated from Stanford University in 2007. The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl brought her work to a wider online audience in 2011. In her 2021 Stanford commencement address, she recalled making its first episode with limited resources and described how friends from her university community helped the series grow. That account gives her early career a practical shape: a concept became an episode because people agreed to act, produce and contribute. The audience could then meet a character whose discomfort was central to the comedy.

Insecure, which Rae created with Larry Wilmore, began in 2016 and ran through 2021. She played Issa Dee while also writing and producing the HBO series. Its friendship between Issa and Molly, played by Yvonne Orji, gives professional uncertainty and personal choices a shared history. FLM.RED finds the show especially rewarding when a conversation changes meaning because these women remember earlier versions of each other. Rae received Golden Globe nominations for the performance in 2017, 2018 and 2022. Those are nominations; the awards record does not list a win in those years.

Her film work includes The Lovebirds (2020), opposite Kumail Nanjiani, in which a couple’s relationship crisis collides with a murder mystery. In 2023 she played President Barbie in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and voiced Jessica Drew / Spider-Woman in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. These are different performance settings: a live-action comedy ensemble, a romantic pair under pressure and an animated superhero world. In FLM.RED’s reading, they offer useful comparisons for watching how a confident delivery can establish a character quickly, while a reply or a pause allows doubt to enter the scene.

Producing remains part of that career alongside acting. Rae is one of the producers of One of Them Days (2025), the comedy starring Keke Palmer and SZA. That credit belongs to her work helping a film take shape, and should be distinguished from an acting role in it. Following her career through both kinds of work makes room for the performers and collaborators around her, too. The linked films below are the titles currently connected to Issa Rae in FLM.RED; they are not a complete record of her television, film or production credits.