Issa Rae, the creator and star of the HBO comedy, Insecure, was brutally honest about whom she’d be rooting for at the Emmy’s last night, during an interview on the show’s red carpet.
“I’m rooting for everybody black,” she said in an interview with Variety‘s live stream. “I am!”
“I’m rooting for everybody black!” #Insecure star @IssaRae says on the red carpet #Emmys pic.twitter.com/Pz3DJPyJc2
— Variety (@Variety) September 17, 2017
Huh. Okaaaaay.
Commenters on Twitter were quick to point out that Rae’s comments were exclusionary, and contrary to the Emmy Awards’ recent commitment to increasing diversity within its ranks — and embracing all minorities, not just racial minorities.
Rae might have been expressing her own disappointment at having been snubbed by Emmy voters.
Although the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences clearly tried to make their nominees as diverse as possible — even where it seemed like quite a stretch — Rae’s show, Insecure, which features a mostly African-American cast, writing and production staff, didn’t earn a single nomination.
She finished off her interview with Variety by giving what could have been her Emmy acceptance speech, had she gotten the opportunity to give one.
“People just let us be and tell the stories we wanted to tell and me and the writers ran with it,” she said of her show. “You have so many people behind the camera and behind the scenes that are committed to telling authentic, real stories that haven’t been seen on television before and you have audiences embracing it because they’re tired of seeing the same old, same old stories. So it’s just a pleasure to be among such great company.”
Last night’s Emmy Awards, which floundered in ratings, was also the most diverse in the show’s history. In addition to a record number of minority nominees, the show awarded its first-ever writing trophy to an African American woman, Lena Waithe, who penned an episode of Aziz Ansari’s hit show, Master of None.
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