Issa Rae On “7PM In Brooklyn”

Issa Rae joins Carmelo Anthony and The Kid Mero to talk “Insecure” reboot, the use of A.I. in TV & film, being inspired by “Love & Basketball”, and more on “7PM in Brooklyn”.

We share this week’s episode of “7PM in Brooklyn”, a Wave Sports + Entertainment Original, hosted by NBA legend, Carmelo Anthony, and multi-talented comedian and host, The Kid Mero.

This week, the guys are joined by actress, writer, and producer Issa Rae.

Issa opens up about the pivotal moments in her career that shaped her journey into the entertainment industry, including her adaptation to artificial intelligence as a creative tool.

She also shares her thoughts on doing an “Insecure” reboot and revealing that Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “Love & Basketball” inspired her to write her first script.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• [4:40] ISSA OPENS UP ABOUT THE PIVOTAL MOMENT IN HER CAREER THAT LED HER TO PURSUE HER DREAM OF BEING A FILMMAKER

ISSA: “I got this opportunity to study abroad in Paris and I wanted to, because my family or my dad is from Senegal, my mom is a French teacher and I grew up speaking French, but I really wanted to get back in touch with Senegalese culture and I could do that on this Paris trip. It was amazing and I got into the program, but at the same time, I was applying with a friend– we wrote a screenplay together and it became a finalist at Sundance and if we got chosen– or semi-finalist, we got chosen as a finalist, then I would be in Paris and I wouldn’t be able to go to Sundance and I was like, this is what I want do, I want to be a filmmaker, but Paris can change my life. There was also a dude there, and I was like, this person could be the one…but if I get this opportunity and I miss it because I’m in Paris, I have that feeling of regret I talked about…So I decided not to go to Paris. The program thought I was very, very dumb to take a chance to see if my script would be a finalist at Sundance and I had to wait to do it and we didn’t get picked. So I kind of in my mind felt like I missed out on this opportunity for nothing and I ended up also dropping out of school for a short period to still try to pursue it and still sell this script and it led to absolutely nowhere and I think about if I had just gone on that trip, my life would’ve been completely different. I might’ve stayed out there– my mom studied abroad, she lived in Paris for a while, that’s how she met my dad and I’m like, oh, I could have taken my mom’s journey and I could have been a French teacher or whatever. I know that I would’ve probably gotten knocked up out there to be honest and that would’ve been a life that I could have liked but I think about making that decision was kind of betting on myself and being hopeful that this script would lead me to the path that I’ve desired the most and I don’t regret it because it led me here but I always think about what would’ve happened if I went to Paris.”

• [10:04] ISSA SAYS SHE WAS INSPIRED BY GINA PRINCE-BYTHEWOOD TO WRITE HER FIRST FEATURE SCRIPT AFTER WATCHING “LOVE & BASKETBALL”

ISSA: “‘Love & Basketball’ was beautiful and it really spoke to me at the time, and it was like 16-year-old me was inspired by the fact that Gina Prince[-Bythewood] wrote it and directed it herself. I watched the director’s commentary over and over and over again, and it was just like, oh, if she could do this, I could do this and right after I saw that movie, I was like, I’m writing a script. I’m writing a feature script too…I wrote her [Gina Prince-Bythewood] when I was 16. I was like, I wrote a script because of you…I hand wrote it. I said, I want you to direct my first movie that I wrote because I was inspired by ‘Love & Basketball’ and then three months later, she emailed me and wrote me back and that sh*t also changed my life where it was just like this person that I admired wrote me back. She said, no…but she wished me the best. It meant a lot and then I kept that letter forever and framed it and then when I came out with ‘Awkward Black Girl’, she wrote me. She was like, Hey, I just want to give you props– I gave an homage to ‘Love & Basketball’ in that series, there was an episode where we referenced it and so it got back to her– so she hit me she was like, oh, keep doing your thing, I watched your series.”

• [16:18] ISSA SAYS DEVELOPING “INSECURE” AT HBO WAS HER DREAM AND THEY BROUGHT THE BEST OUT OF HER

ISSA: “That was my real dream. I had manifested it– I wanted a show on HBO and so I was devastated when ABC passed on the pilot and then HBO called me and they found out I was free and we took a meeting. At that time I was like, okay, I’m going to make this all of me and I’m going to base it more on the experiences that I’ve had but that was still a crazy development process. They take three years and even when I’d tell people I have a show at HBO, they’d be like, but do you because you’re going to be in development hell and I was like, ah. They’re just known for really refining their shows and they have a specific aesthetic and it matters and so in that way, I knew that I wanted to say something, and even that developed over time but they brought that out of me in the best way. ‘Insecure’ wasn’t ‘Insecure’ at first, it was ‘Nonprofit’ and I was writing it with Larry Wilmore. He worked with Quinta too on ‘Abbott’, but he was really great at bringing that out of me too.”

• [22:05] ISSA SAYS SHE HAS NO DESIRE TO DO A REBOOT OF “INSECURE”

“It’s so personal to me. I feel like Larry David, nobody else can do ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ because that’s his shit and his gripes. So I would almost feel like fuck that. It would feel like the AI voice of Beyonce. I’m like, no, that’s my shit and those were my experiences. If they wanted to create something else, then sure. But no, I have no desire for a reboot of ‘Insecure’.”

• [33:40] MELO SAYS JR SMITH AND KENYON MARTIN WERE THE TWO TEAMMATES WHO UNDERSTOOD HIM THE MOST

MELO: “I think out of all the teammates, it would have to be, I would say it have to be JR Smith and Kenyon Martin, who I was on my team for the longest of all of our years. We was in Denver, we was here in New York. We spent a lot of time together to the point where it’s like, I don’t even have to look at you and you know what type of mode I’m in, you know what I’m about to do, you know, see it ahead of time but that’s also spending time with each other off the court, hanging out comradery over the years but going through shit together, seeing who really is what, seeing who’s really there for you– It is a lot of shit that we go through behind the scenes that people don’t know. So day to day who’s supporting that? Who’s there with you? When you going through your shit, not in the gym, but at the crib. Who’s coming to the crib? Who telling you to come to their crib? Let’s figure this out. That was the energy. So I say over my 19 years, those were probably the two guys that, because they was on the team with me for the longest.”

• [34:31] ISSA PRAISES PRENTICE PENNY AND AMY ANIOBI AS HER CLOSEST COLLABORATORS ON “INSECURE”

ISSA: “Shout out Prentice Penny to who was a showrunner for ‘Insecure’. I think I recognized later and even though we worked so closely together and he was a showrunner and we were partners on the project, that he was a great mentor to me too. Ego is the thing we’re talking about validation. It takes a lot as a [veteran] or even as someone who’s appeared to be like, yeah, you’re doing your thing, acknowledge your stamp and he was very egoless throughout the process and there’s so many horror stories about if you get assigned a showrunner, they might steer the vision a newbie, and you don’t really know what you’re doing and they take that as their opportunity to like– this is my stamp, this is about to be my shit– and he was always very much like, this is your show. I’m going to guide you in. I’m here as a resource and I’m going to make sure that you’re good in the story that you want to get told, is told. There’s another girl that I went to college with who we didn’t interact at the same time we were, she was a year older and when I started doing my web series, ‘Awkward Black Girl’, one of my other producer friends was like, you should bring in a writer’s room and I was like, writer’s room? I’m going to do this shit myself. She was like, no, you should consider one of the girls that we went to college with..Then she brought in another girl from UCLA, but that girl, her name is Amy Aniobi and she’s the director/producer of all these things now but…I got to bring her onto ‘Insecure’ and she’s one of those people that can just seamlessly write my voice and be hilarious and she just has a second nature of just being brilliant and understanding TV and she’s been such an influential part of my journey and she’s kind of an unsung hero.”

• [50:34] ISSA ON UTILIZING A.I. FOR SCRIPTS AND HOW IT CAN BE HELPFUL AND ALSO THE DANGERS IT POSES

ISSA: “I’m trying to wrap my mind around not being as afraid of it. I was initially like ChatGPT no, fuck, no, I’m not doing that shit. That’s crazy. And then I found that it was really helpful to get ideas about the technical parts of a script that I was writing…and in that way, it saves me a lot of time. I think about growing up how my mom was scared of the computer and scared of the internet and all those things, and I never want to be that, so it’s the balance of knowing that this is a tool that can be used horribly, but also trying to figure out the ways that it can be helpful.”

ISSA: “I had this thought the other day that I felt like we are societally surrounded by a bunch of Lex Luthers and there are no Supermans. So we have the Elon Musk, we have the Mark Zuckerberg, we have all these people that are creating things to essentially destroy us without– and our government is too fucking slow to put blocks on these things and let’s have an argument about something else to distract it but it’s so terrifying because there’s no one to really save us from ourselves in that way.”

• [58:20] MELO ON KENDRICK LAMAR HEADLINING THE SUPER BOWL AND LIL WAYNE SNUB

MELO: “I’m not mad at, not mad at he’s going to put on the show. This is what he do. Also, he got momentum. He’s a great performer. So I’m sure that NFL, whoever the powers that be, understands that. Those aspects of it, crowd, all of that, they control everything that comes with that but with [Lil] Wayne, how can you sit there and say he don’t have enough hits? That’s crazy. Nah, [Lil] Wayne should have that show. It should have been [Lil] Wayne’s show. Come on. Let him bring in who he wanted to bring in similar to what they did in LA– Dre, Snoop, all of those guys, you do the same thing and let [Lil] Wayne headline that.”