Saying you’re busy to Issa Rae seems straight-up sacrilegious.
It’s a sunny Friday in the summer and the 39-year-old jack-of-all-trades shows up to our Venice Beach bungalow shoot location dressed head-to-toe in her hometown’s famous purple-and-gold Los Angeles Lakers’ gear, serenely calm, fully present and entirely ready to go.
While the bohemian neighborhood may be known for being rather lax, the self-described introvert is serious and focused. Rae is in and out of hair and makeup in record time—sorry, everyone else, but one hour and some change is now the standard—a true professional teaching a masterclass on how to seamlessly pivot from one project to the next.
Today, the Stanford grad is only a few miles away from where she was born and attended high school (after living in Senegal and Potomac, MD, her family moved back to Los Angeles when she was in sixth grade, and she still lives nearby with her husband, Louis Diame), but her impressive bio is pretty much world renown: As a devoted champion of Black artists, the actress-writer-producer-pioneer-plus headed up the popular comedy Web series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, which was adapted into HBO’s hit Insecure. Running from 2016 to 2021, the mega-hit earned Rae wide recognition as the co-creator, co-writer and star, as well as multiple nominations for both Golden Globe and Emmy Awards.
Somewhere in-between, she also published a New York Times best-selling memoir and launched a media production company Hoorae to consolidate her various film, television and digital content companies. In 2021, she signed a five-year deal with WarnerMedia, which owns HBO. The partnership gave HBO, HBO Max and Warner Bros. television exclusive rights to Rae’s TV work, plus a first-look film deal that spans several brands, including Warner Bros. Pictures Group, New Line and HBO Max.
“I’m not one of those people who misses school—not high school, not college, not any of it!” she laughs when asked what it’s like to be working as a multi-hyphenate somewhat adjacent to where she spent her formative years. As the story goes, Rae attended a medical magnet high school with plans to become a doctor like her father, a pediatrician. “My dad is Senegalese, West African, and I had the pressure of…him,” she previously shared. “He’s the oldest family member who emigrated to the States. You didn’t have a choice to pursue frivolous things like the arts.” A trip to the ER changed her course to studying political science in college with the intent to go to law school. Theater classes on the side sparked her creative side (and a conversation with her dad) and the rest is history.
“I didn’t have this journey completely planned out, but there was always determination,” she says. “The determination was always there.”
And then there are the movies and more: Rae starred in The Hate U Give, Little, The Photograph, The Lovebirds and Vengeance, and last year alone she was in three Oscar-nominated films, including Barbie, American Fiction and Spider Man: Across the Spiderverse. She’s also been included not once, but twice, in Time 100’s list of the most influential people and graced the cover of the February issue. To add to the resume—this is somehow still the abridged version—there’s a podcast and her very popular Target-sold Viarae Prosecco that’s in partnership with E. & J. Gallo Winery.
“I do check out,” she tells me before the weekend hits. “I was just in the UK and there was a drive we had to do at the end of the day in the countryside and that really helped me decompress. I need to make an effort to check out of work, but I do it. I have to do it. I make myself do it.”
Come Tuesday, Rae says, she’s back to filming something new. This week, she’ll also casually drop her award-winning, plant-based Sienna Naturals hair care brand on Sephora.com, a family-fueled partnership that she is clearly proud of and very involved with. Not only is the line committed to addressing the root needs of hair—offering cleansing, treatment, conditioning, and styling products that tackle dryness, promote growth, repair damage, define curls and soothe scalp sensitivities—but it’s also one of the first dermatologist-tested hair-care lines specifically tailored for textured hair. Powered by custom formulas inspired by ancestral tradition, the Sienna Naturals products boast a very impressive proprietary blend of more than 20 active ingredients, a long list of accolades and is big on pushing “the clean beauty innovation envelope.”
It’s also about to reach a wider audience, and Rae is ready. She is quick to stress that both Sienna Naturals and the Sephora Accelerate brand incubation program hit a very personal note for her, and she is “the toughest product tester.”
“It’s all about the health of the hair,” she says of the line, which was founded by her sister-in-law, Hannah Diop, and Rae later joined as a co-founder. “I used to do so much to my hair, and then I realized that it just needs to be healthy. That’s the key.”
But it’s not about Rae: “The best part about this Sephora partnership is that now more people will have access to a line that works—and this works.”
She also hints that more is in the pipeline, before looking to her trusted publicist for the high sign. “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t yet,” she says with her signature smile. When pressed if another beauty line might soon be added to her already-packed portfolio, she says she’s “good,” but shares she’s a long-time fan of Dr. Barbara Sturm, Ole Henriksen, Mario Badescu and Topicals.
What she can discuss is one other sports-related venture on the horizon. This one is decidedly different for Rae and involves the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Talk of the project gets her animated; Rae is happy the sport is gaining popularity but thinks it’s just the tip of the iceberg for the league and female athletes.
“There’s so much more there,” she says. “There’s so much more to do. There’s so much more coming.”
I can’t tell if she’s referring to basketball or her work projects. As she wraps up her day and jumps in her car to go home, I have a feeling it’s both.
