It was our extreme pleasure as Annenberg Ambassadors, in conjunction with the USC Annenberg HBO Diverse Voices Forum, to host comedienne Issa Rae at our school!

Our peers had a slew of questions for the creator of Awkward Black Girl, Insecure and an upcoming 90’s-era series about LA, but my fellow Ambassador Roberto & I were selected to kick off the Q&A! I asked:

Launching your content on YouTube, I can imagine that much of your work was shaped by comments from fans and haters online. Now, as a writer and star of Insecure with more projects and campaigns underway, I’m sure that feedback has quadrupled. How do you filter out the noise about what you should and shouldn’t be doing with your career, and do you feel any kind of representational burden?

A heavily-loaded question that warranted an equally heavy answer! Click below to hear what she had to say about representational burden:

I love that neither Issa nor her show purports to represent all black people, but both manage to reach the young black women I know and affect us in such a visceral way. We find ourselves staring at the screen in disbelief, mouths agape like “We say that all the time! Why is that me? Why is that us?”

I can’t wait to see the third season of Insecure, Issa’s new show, more Black writers rooms, black-led TV shows, Nigerian actresses taking over…am I getting ahead of myself, or getting it right?

Thanks Issa!