Issa Rae Says She's Still Doing What She Loves to Do, Only Now 'the Goals Are Bigger'
Issa Rae Says She's Still Doing What She Loves to Do, Only Now 'the Goals Are Bigger'
Charlotte Phillipp, Abby SternFri, April 17, 2026 at 10:10 PM UTC
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Credit: Canva -
Issa Rae is opening up about her career goals
The actress-filmmaker, 41, got candid about what she views as her "purpose" as a creative at Canva’s annual Canva Create event
"I wanted to create characters that reflected my circle, like the people that I love and admire and that feature them primarily," the Insecure star said
Issa Rae is opening up about her career goals.
During Canva’s annual Canva Create event on Thursday, April 16, the actress and filmmaker, 41, got candid about what she views as her "purpose" as a creative — and how that idea has transformed (and also stayed the same) as she's over the course of her career.
"I wanted to create characters that reflected my circle, like the people that I love and admire and that feature them primarily," the Insecure star told host Lily Workneh. "I love Black-centered stories and I grew up watching Black-centered stories and [that] gave me so much confidence, in even just the wherewithal to pursue this passion of mine."
"So that has stayed the same, but project to project, obviously the goals kind of get bigger and that's only happen because of the success of each project," she continued. "But yeah, I even say now, the industry has changed so much, and the industry ebbs and flows in terms of keeping our stories and priorities, [but] our mission to center Black stories will never ever change."
Issa Rae and Aurora James at Canva Create in 2026Credit: Canva
The conversation between Rae, fellow panelist and fashion designer Aurora James and Workneh took place at SoFi Stadium for Canva's "Building Creative Empires for Social Good" event.
The trio also discussed the ways in which they've committed to challenging social norms through their respective art forms, and Rae spoke about how her popular 2011 web series Awkward Black Girl helped her to build a community of like-minded creatives who wanted to tell new kinds of stories in Hollywood.
"When I saw the response to Awkward Black Girl, it started growing," she said, recalling that people would reach out to her to say, "'What you're doing is amazing. We're also trying to do the same thing.'"
"And then we did a collaborative partnership to launch a series, and that ended up being really successful," Rae shared. "Then I was like, 'Oh, we're building a channel of stuff that I like and that I want to see and that people really want to see and they want to enjoy.'"
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Rae shared that the creative community later helped her to get to get her hit HBO comedy series on TV, after she had a "discouraging" attempt at getting another TV pilot made.
Issa Rae at the Film Independent Spirit AwardsCredit: Araya Doheny/Getty
"So I had the idea of, maybe we can do the Awkward Black Girl model where you get audiences excited about a project and then networks come to you," the actress said, which led her to create "a pilot program called ColorCreative that ultimately was about giving opportunities to other writers, funding their pilots and hoping that networks."
That initial idea grew into a larger management company, which means a lot to Rae as someone who hopes to foster new talent.
"I want to support the people that I'm fans of — just as a genuine lover of the arts and what we create," Rae shared.
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Elsewhere during the Canva Create conversation, Rae shared that creating Insecure, which she starred in for its entire run on HBO from 2016 to 2021, still serves as her proudest accomplishment to date, but not for the reason you might thing.
"Hands down, my proudest accomplishment is Insecure, just for the doors that are open for so many other writers and creators and producers and people who are doing amazing things now," she said, sharing that she was also proud of her producing work on 2025's buddy comedy One of Them Days, starring Keke Palmer and SZA.
"Most recently, being able to make a studio movie, produce a studio movie [with] a writer that I love, Syreeta Singleton, and in a time when studio comedies aren't getting made and having the pressure of if this doesn't work, then they're not going to make any other Black comedies — especially one starring two Black women — and being able to make $50 million in theaters," she continued. "Now. having other opportunities to create more films, and in a sense, bring comedies back...I'm like, 'Great.'"
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
