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Issa Rae Talks Love and Hollywood
The ‘Awkward Black Girl’ opens up about her Netflix release, ‘The Lovebirds’
Issa Rae truly is rooting for everybody Black. During a busy press run focused on promoting her latest film, The Lovebirds, the Insecure star made time to discuss the rom-com and her meteoric career with members of the African American Film Critics Association.
In a wide-ranging Zoom conversation, Rae discussed everything from texts from Ava DuVernay to what goes into her roles. This last point is important because in the wacky murder mystery The Lovebirds, Rae teams up with Pakistani American comedian Kumail Nanjiani — who also starred in the HBO comedy Silicon Valley — to portray live-in lovers Leilani and Jibran on the brink of a breakup.
Before delving further, let’s review a bizarre social media blip for Issa Rae relevant to The Lovebirds.
Approximately two years ago, Rae was trending on Twitter for a chapter in her 2015 comedic bestseller, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. Prompted by a (much-maligned) study pointing to Asian men and Black women as least desirable in the dating pool, Rae humorously suggested they date each other. Now, with Molly and Andrew (aka #AsianBae) on Insecure and Lovebirds, audiences who didn’t already know are now seeing what that coupledom could…
