Issa Rae
Jo-Issa Rae Diop[1] (born January 12, 1985),[2] credited professionally as Issa Rae, is an American actress, writer, and producer.[3][4] Founder of Hoorae Media, she achieved wider recognition as the co-creator, co-writer, and star of the HBO television series Insecure (2016–2021), for which she was nominated for multiple Golden Globes Awards and Primetime Emmy Awards.[5][6]
Not to be confused with Iso Rae.
Issa Rae
Joissa Diop-Diame
- Actress
- writer
- producer
2011–present
Rae first garnered attention for her work on the YouTube web series Awkward Black Girl.[7] Since 2011, Rae has continued to develop her YouTube channel, which features various short films, web series, and other content created by black people.[8][9] Her 2015 memoir, titled The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, became a New York Times bestseller.
Rae has also starred in feature films, with roles in the drama The Hate U Give (2018); the fantasy comedy Little (2019); the romance The Photograph (2020); the romantic comedy The Lovebirds (2020); the comedy thriller Vengeance (2022); and the comedies Barbie and American Fiction (2023), receiving nominations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and Critics' Choice Movie Awards with the cast. She also voiced Jess Drew / Spider-Woman in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) and Beyond the Spider-Verse (upcoming). Rae provided the voice work for the short film Hair Love, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2020.[10]
In 2018 and 2022, Rae was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world,[11][12] and in 2014 in the Forbes '30 Under 30' list in the entertainment section.[13] She was recognized with the Peabody Trailblazer Award and the Producers Guild of America Visionary Award.
Early life[edit]
Jo-Issa Rae Diop was born in Los Angeles, California.[14] Her father, Abdoulaye Diop, is a pediatrician and neonatologist from Senegal, and her mother, Delyna Marie Diop (née Hayward), is a teacher from Louisiana.[3][15][16] Her parents met in France, when they were both in school.[17] She has four siblings. Her father has a medical practice in Inglewood, California.[18]: xiii
The family lived in Dakar, Senegal,[1] during some of her childhood.[19] She was raised mostly in Potomac, Maryland, where she grew up with "things that aren't considered 'black,' like the swim team and street hockey and Passover dinners with Jewish best friends."[20] Rae was raised Catholic, her mother's faith.[21]
When Rae was in sixth grade, her family moved to the affluent View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she attended a predominantly black middle school. Rae graduated from King Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science, where she started acting.[1] Her parents divorced when she was in high school.[18]: 100–102 Rae is fluent in French.[22]
In 2007, Rae graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in African and African-American Studies. As a college student, she made music videos, wrote and directed plays, and created a mock reality series called Dorm Diaries for fun. At Stanford, Rae met Tracy Oliver, who helped produce Awkward Black Girl and starred on the show as Nina.[20]
After college, Rae received a theater fellowship at The Public Theater in New York City.[1] Oliver and Rae started taking classes together at the New York Film Academy. Rae worked odd jobs and at one point was struggling to decide between business school and law school, but abandoned both prospects when Awkward Black Girl gained wider popularity in 2011.[15]
Personal life[edit]
Rae's birth name, Jo-Issa, comes from a combination of the names of her grandmothers: Joyce and Isseu. Her middle name, Rae, is after an aunt, who was an artist.[20]
Rae married her longtime boyfriend, Louis Diame, a Senegalese businessman, in a private ceremony in France in July 2021.[52] Rae first wore her engagement ring publicly on the cover of Essence magazine's April 2019 issue.[52]
Public image and activism[edit]
In 2012, Rae was included on the annual Forbes '30 Under 30' list in the entertainment section.[13] She was listed two times in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.
In May 2015, Rae appeared on the cover of Essence magazine's Game Changers issue, alongside Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, Debbie Allen, and Mara Brock Akil. Rae expressed her desire for more people of color working in production behind the scenes to make a lasting impact in the television industry.[53] On the red carpet at the 2017 Emmy Awards, Rae told reporters, "I'm rooting for everybody Black." The quote went viral and appeared on T-shirts and in the song "Sue Me" by the rapper Wale.[54] Rae was also vocally supportive of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.[55]
Rae is an advocate for civil rights and women's rights movements. Her work includes themes of equality and social justice. She works closely with organizations like the ACLU, BLD PWR, and Black Lives Matter.[56] Rae has used her platform to bring attention to police violence and brutality against African-Americans. Following the police shooting of Alton Sterling in 2016, she raised $700,000 for the Sterling Family Trust to help pay for the Sterling children to attend college.[57]
Her show Insecure has changed the public perception of the South Los Angeles community by highlighting Black businesses.[58]