YouTube’s “Awkward Black Girl” is coming to a small screen near you. Issa Rae has just secured a major deal with HBO, with a pilot for a comedy titled “Insecure.”
Co-created with Larry Wilmore, the series is described as a “Focus on the awkward experiences and racy tribulations of a modern-day African American woman. These are also themes Rae has tackled in her successful Web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, which won a Shorty Award,” reports Deadline.
Wilmore recently made headlines when he nabbed a new gig as the host of Comedy Central’s “The Nightly Show.”
In the past, the 26-year-old has run into some issues with television executives when she first pitched the idea of her series. “After meeting with a couple different executives in television, and seeing our visions don’t really align, I don’t want to sell my life to it now. In one meeting, during the first 10 seconds, this guy said, ‘The show is pretty funny. This is about a typical black woman with her black women problems.’ And then said big names were necessary to make it to television. Everything we were against, he was for,” she tells The Grio.
In January 2011, Rae began shooting “Awkward Black Girl” after realizing she couldn’t afford to make it an animated series. She asked a friend, Andrew Allen James, to play “A,” and her bestie, (who had no experience) to shoot it. Shortly thereafter, the Web series became a hit. Since then, both Rae and her new business partner, Wilmore, have become notorious for joking about taboo topics such as race and the success of series like “Black-ish,” “Jane the Virgin” and “Empire,” all shows that audiences seem to love, but that glorify stereotypes about minorities.
Unfortunately for fans, if you’ve been wondering if HBO will order a full season of Rae’s upcoming comedy series, you’ll have to keep your fingers crossed. Getting a show on the air, especially one without an A-list cast, can be a tricky process. The good news? In the meantime, you can hold yourself over with Rae’s new book, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, an essay collection due to hit bookstores Feb. 10.
