Issa Rae
Kendrick Lamar, MF DOOM, & More Featured On Biden/Harris Inaugural Playlist Curated Issa Rae’s Raedio & D-Nice
Source: Drew Angerer / Getty In just a few days, Donald Trump will be out of the White House. The country will begin healing as President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris takeover, to celebrate there is a playlist full of jams to mark the occasion. When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris each put their hands on a bible and swear to honor and defend the U.S. constitution as the 46th president and vice president of the United States, things will look very different. There won’t be hundreds of thousands of people flooding the National Mall to witness the moment because COVID-19 is still crushing the country. Also, there was that bootleg coup incited by the current lame-duck President Donald Trump last week that now has the entire country on edge and hundreds of national guard t...
Issa Rae Tapped For Next MasterClass, Announces ‘Insecure’ Ending After Season 5
Source: HBO / HBO Issa Rae is one of Hollywood’s brightest stars and she’s sharing tips on how those aspiring to break in the business can too. In an announcement on the official MasterClass website, the series of 14 video-based lessons detail the Insecure creators experience in the business, providing priceless insight for creators and preparing them to launch their own projects and break into Hollywood. “The Emmy-nominated star and creator of the award-winning HBO series Insecure is here to show you how it’s done. Issa Rae uses her signature do-it-yourself ethos, humor and voice to offer writers and creators of all types the motivation and tools they’ll need on their journey. Issa shares how she has navigated Hollywood while black and inspires you to reach your creative dreams ...
Black Ops: Kanye West Takes Issue With Issa Rae’s Swipe At Him on SNL
Source: Neil Mockford / Getty Well, it seems like “presidential candidate” Kanye West got some skin as thin as the orange peel on the current “commander-in-chief” residing in the White House. For their latest episode, Saturday Night Live had Issa Rae as their host and during one of the sketches, dubbed “Your Voice Chicago,” she played an NAACP lawyer who was set to vote Black down the ballot with the exception of one Kanye West to whom she said “Kanye? F-him.” Seemed innocent and funny enough, but it rubbed Yeezus the wrong way. [embedded content] While many in the culture feel the same exact way about the MAGA rapper who’s running election interference on behalf of Republicans, Kanye took issue with the sketch and took to Twitter to air out his grievances a la Trump. Accusing Saturda...
Nigerian doctor named one of TIME’s Most Influential People in the world
TIME named Nigerian physician Tunji Funsho to the 2020 TIME100, its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The full list and related tributes are available now at time.com/time100, and Mr Funsho’s TIME100 profile is available here. The list, now in its seventeenth year, recognizes the activism, innovation and achievement of the world’s most influential individuals. Mr Funsho, a cardiologist based in Lagos, Nigeria, is the first Rotary member to receive this honour for the organisation’s work to eradicate polio, having played an essential role in ensuring Africa’s certification as wild polio-free in August of 2020. “I’m honored to be recognized by TIME for my part in ensuring that no child in Africa will ever again be paralyzed by wild polio, a disease that once disabl...
Emmys So Black: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Regina King, Zendaya & More Snag Golden Lady Statuettes
Source: ABC / Getty it was a fantastic night for Black Hollywood during the 72nd annual Primetime Emmy Awards. Despite the COVID-19 global pandemic still being a thing, the show went on as television’s brightest all converged on Hollywood virtually, while in the safety of their own watch party bubbles and homes. We not gonna lie, while watching Schitt’s Creek sweep all comedy categories, which meant that Insecure coming off its best season, nabbed one award out its 8 nominations, we were beginning to worry if it was gonna be a long night. BUT, it was refreshing to see Dan Levy, who won awards for writing, directing, and supporting actor shoutout of Issa Rae’s hit HBO comedy series in one his acceptance speeches. “I want to recognize Issa Rae and the writers on Insecure for writi...
HBO’s Coastal Elites Feels Like a Carefully Curated Twitter Feed: Review
The Pitch: Amidst the backdrop of 2020 — the heady and often unpleasant mix of an impending presidential election and a worldwide pandemic that’s hitting the United States especially hard — five people deliver five different monologues (or, as they’re briefly dubbed, “unhinged rants”) about the Way We Live Now in the satirical HBO “special presentation” Coastal Elites. Look at the Camera: Because of the very nature of the coronavirus pandemic, Coastal Elites is a decidedly un-flashy glimpse into the lives of a quintet of Americans. From sly writer Paul Rudnick, the 90-minute special presentation (that’s what HBO is calling Coastal Elites, and although it’s movie-length, frankly, the descriptor fits) is meant as a mix of earnest sincerity and dry wit. How is this disparate handful strugglin...
The 25 Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2020
“New year, new decade, new films, right?” That was January, back when we were still looking ahead at 2020 with blind optimism and ill-fated excitement. Sigh, hindsight is 20/20 they say, right? Who knew. At the time, we had 50 exciting new titles we were anticipating, most of which have since been either postponed, dumped to VOD, or relegated to a limbo state. It’s been an unnerving year for the film industry, to say the least. A year fraught with shutdowns, furloughs, layoffs, bankruptcies, and re-evaluations. All of that change has prompted a seismic shift in how everything’s run across the media landscape, and no one truly has a grip on things just yet. Odds are they won’t for quite some time. Because of this, anticipating anything right now — let alone anything in pop culture — seems l...
HBO Shares First Trailer for Coastal Elites with Issa Rae, Dan Levy, Bette Midler: Watch
HBO has shared the first trailer for its new satirical film Coastal Elites. The socially-distanced comedy will light up your screens on September 12th with stars Issa Rae, Dan Levy, Bette Midler, Sarah Paulson, and Kaitlyn Dever. Coastal Elites solves the practical problem of filming in quarantine by borrowing an idea from the theater. It’s a cinematic approach to the monologue play, as each of the five characters take turns speaking into the camera. Here, the camera is apparently supposed to be a laptop fixture, and each of the monologues represents a remote video call. In the trailer, for example, we see Levy’s Mark Hesterman greeting an unseen therapist named Dr. Morton, before launching into a joke-filled rant about identity. It’s unclear if everyone is in therapy, but f...
Jordan Peele and Issa Rae Team Up for Universal’s Sinkhole
Jordan Peele is keeping things spooky. As Deadline reports, the Oscar-winning mastermind behind Get Out and Us is teaming up with Insecure star Issa Rae on a curious new genre film for Universal called Sinkhole. Based on Leyna Krow’s short story, the film surrounds a young family that moves into a dream home, only one of the amenities is a gaping sinkhole in the backyard. And said sinkhole tends to fix broken things — possibly people even. As with anything Peele touches, there’s an inherent social commentary within the story. As Deadline notes, the subplot of Sinkhole carries a “commentary on the human condition through the lens of female identity.” Universal nabbed the rights to the story for a seven figure deal, beating out more than 10 studio bidders, which makes this something a coup. ...
Issa Rae & Bette Midler Team Up For HBO Special ‘Coastal Elites’
Source: HBO / HBO Issa Rae stays getting those checks. On Monday (Jun 22), HBO announced that Issa Rae and Bette Midler will be starring in the new series, Coastal Elites, a series that will explore the deeply divided politics and the universal pursuit of human connection during the pandemic through a series of confessionals. The series, which was produced entirely under quarantine, “tells stories of breaking down and breaking through in the summer of 2020 that are funny, searing, poignant and now,” HBO said in a statement. The series written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Jay Roach will explore the deeply divided politics and the universal pursuit of human connection during the pandemic through a series of confessionals from five characters played by Issa Rae, Bette Midler, Sar...
Issa Rae & Bette Midler Team Up For HBO Special ‘Coastal Elites’
Source: HBO / HBO Issa Rae stays getting those checks. On Monday (Jun 22), HBO announced that Issa Rae and Bette Midler will be starring in the new series, Coastal Elites, a series that will explore the deeply divided politics and the universal pursuit of human connection during the pandemic through a series of confessionals. The series, which was produced entirely under quarantine, “tells stories of breaking down and breaking through in the summer of 2020 that are funny, searing, poignant and now,” HBO said in a statement. The series written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Jay Roach will explore the deeply divided politics and the universal pursuit of human connection during the pandemic through a series of confessionals from five characters played by Issa Rae, Bette Midler, Sar...
Netflix’s The Lovebirds Brings Out the Best in Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae: Review
The Pitch: Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) and Leilani (Issa Rae) are four years into a relationship that’s on the fritz. They snip at one another. They argue over the littlest things. They can’t even imagine themselves winning The Amazing Race. All of that drama is put on hold, however, when the two fading lovebirds fly right into a maddening murder mystery that takes them all across New Orleans. Even worse, they’re the prime suspects. Can they solve the crime before they’re taken in to do the time? That all depends on whether or not they can set aside their differences and find a way to be a team again. The Big Schtick: The Lovebirds reunites director Michael Showalter and Nanjiani, who both leveled up with 2017’s heartfelt and hilarious The Big Sick. It’s a strong collaboration and this latest...
