On Friday Urbanworld Film Festival attendees got the chance to partake in a special screening for HBO’s new comedy series Insecure.
The series stars YouTube sensation Issa Rae and actress Yvonne Orji as two best friends dealing with the ups and downs of life while facing social and racial issues. To read more about the show check out our TV review! Our very own Sade Graham had the chance to catch up with the show’s stars as they talk about their roles, how they relate to their characters and the journey of their show.
Tell me about your role in the TV Series that we’re getting ready to watch tonight.
Yvonne Orji: Yeah Insecure is a new comedy series on HBO. I play Molly, I play Issa’s best friend. It’s about two young ladies who are navigating life and love in south L.A. Molly’s character is a corporate attorney and she’s also the single gal in the group so she’s looking for love however unsuccessfully that may be. You get to really go on this journey with both of them and figure out if they win or lose and what happens in between.
Can you personally relate to your character?
Yvonne Orji: Oh absolutely, I’m single in L.A. enough said. If you’ve ever been single in L.A. for even 5 seconds you know it’s really all in these streets these dating streets are not loyal, they are not.
Can you tell us about working on the show Insecure and your role in the making of the series?
Prentice Penny: I was the show runner of the show and the executive producer of the show. Doing a show like this as I’ve been saying is so timely. We don’t get a chance to make these shows everyday obviously, I mean you can turn on a television and see we don’t get that many chances. In the wake of Atlanta and Queen Sugar for us to be in this timeline is obviously amazing. I think to see people of color doing a show that’s not about our struggle or our pain it’s just about our slice of life and to be able to say like hey we have humanity and we live and we love and relationships like everybody else in the world we live in with the stuff that’s going on police wise and that I just feel like its just so timely. To be able to say hey we’re human and we experience everything else that everybody else experience. Doing a show like this is so important in this moment in that way.
How do you feel to be here tonight?
Prentice Penny:I t feels amazing. It’s so crazy because like a year ago we were filming the pilot. We were shooting the pilot around this time then three weeks later our series was picked up and three weeks from now our show is coming on it’s so surreal to get that conformation. When you’re filming a show you don’t really know. When you’re filming a pilot; like people film pilots all the time and they have no idea if the show is going to go to air or not. Especially for cable it can take you six months to find out if you’re getting picked up. We filmed our pilot and then a month later we were getting our series picked up. It doesn’t happen for us all the time so to be here is so surreal.
How do you feel your character relates to what’s going on in the world now with being a female and an African American?
Issa Rae: This is my specific story and a story that I want to tell about a black woman that I can relate to that I feel like reflects my friends. I don’t even want to say that all black women are represented by this show at all; its very unique and I hope that people can relate to it and that people like it. For me it’s a specific character that I can relate to that I wanted to put on screen.
Were there any similarities between your character in Insecure and The Adventures of Awkward Black Girl?
Issa Rae: My character in insecure is definitely the closest to me. She’s me if I didn’t know what I wanted to do and if I made different decisions. We’ll see in Insecure that it’s more of a grander representation of how I was feeling in my mid to late twenties.
We just heard that it took approximately a year from the pilot to it airing in three weeks how does it feel? Did you expect it to happen it so fast?
Issa Rae: You know you hope. We finished shooting the pilot around this time around last year and it’s crazy how time flies. As soon as we shot the pilot they green lighted it about a week later and then we were in a writer’s room about a month later and here we are today ready to premiere the series. It just shows that HBO has been really really supportive throughout this whole process.
Tell us about your role in the film
Jay R. Ellis: I play Lawrence. People keep saying he’s down on his luck, but I think the dude is just a straight up loser. I feel like he just gave up. You meet him at a really low point in his life—this is a dude who has dreams and ambitions but when you meet him, he’s crippled by fear of failure. He’s stepped out, tried something that failed, and now every time he goes back out there the door gets shut in his face so he’s given up. He thinks this might be all he has in life. When you meet him, he’s a bit of an ass—not because he wants to be but because he’s just frustrated and lost. His frustration within himself is filtered into his relationships.
How is it being here tonight?
Jay R. Ellis: Being here is absolutely amazing—this is my second night here, and there are so many amazing projects here. I’m just so happy that this has been a platform for twenty years, telling stories of people of color. It’s such an amazing thing and we need so much more of it. Especially all these young peoples’ bar for coming up and creating projects becomes lower and lower with phones and whatever, having a place like this to put that project out into the world is so important nurture young voices, and on the actors’ and writers’ sides too. It feels electric to be here.
Do you see this series being influential?
Jay R. Ellis: I definitely hope so. I definitely think it’s insanely relatable—and everyone, regardless of race, can see themselves in one of these characters or someone they know. It’s a very relatable show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MubTJyWukp8
