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Thats not stopping it from generating its signature brand of extremely niche controversy.
Not since the halcyon days of Shonda RhimessTGIT lineupwas Twitter ablaze this routinely.
What was it like to work in a Zoom writers room this season?
Issa Rae:The fuckin worst.
Did they get it?It sucked, and things took a lot longer.
It was pretty devastating to write the last season of this show and not be able to even hug.
Syreeta Singleton:We were trying to give her aFresh Princemoment.
Fran Richter:The Will Smith moment.
Kindsey Young:The lights-out switch.
Talk about finding the balance between the humor and the drama of the show.
:It was always about keeping the show grounded.
This wasnt ever going to be a hard comedy.
We figured out in season one that we were more of a dramedy than just a comedy.
They fuck with it.
Just let them get to episode three; theyll see theres more to it and it has heart.
Okay, they got to episode three.
Let them get to episode five!
And then by the finale, people understood what we were trying to do and were onboard with it.
It was like, What would happen in real life?
What would the actual tension be?
The bones of the story would feel so true that you insert the comedy on top of that.
Shout out to our old writer, Ben Cory Jones; he wasnt paying attention in the room.
But we had to make it relevant to our characters.
Otherwise, it wouldnt have worked.
A.A.:That episode came together so effortlessly.
What percentage of the show comes from your real-life experiences?
A.A.:Like, so much?
Mollys brother dating a girl who has a baby and then being left with the baby is my family.
That happened to my brother, but theyre together now, and its a happy ending.
Thats where the best story comes from.
:Issa pretending to not see Molly at Merkato was inspired by something that actually happened to Laura.
Lets find a way to incorporate this.
That was a story one of the writers told in the room that happened to them.
Their mom could just tell what was wrong.
She was like, Im fine, mom!
And the mom was like, Come here, come here!
Issa, how do you separate Issa the writer from Issa the actress?
Have you ever said, No, Im not doing that?
Why was it important to you to do more episodes that didnt feature you?
:Oh, that was just laziness.
But even as a viewer, I want to live outside of who the main character is.
Weve established a world and made interesting characters.
Ill be like, Nope, actually, Amy wrote that line.
Who are you most excited to write for generally?
:I like writing combinations of people.
Laura Kittrell:I always like doing the group scenes with the girls.
:You were really good at it!
You and Fran our white women are spicy, Ill tell you that.
What are the rules of writing anInsecuresex scene?
:Make it hot.
When it comes to breathy dialogue, less is more.
Always describe what the hands are doing.
And if an ass can be gripped, it should be.
:Did you write the Ferris-wheel scene?
:I wrote the Ferris-wheel scene.
:Unless it was for comedy.
:It seemed pretty situational.
If its Issa and Lawrence, it carries more weight than her having sex with TSA bae.
How did that come about?
We wanted theexperience of the highand the circumstances to set this table for them being vulnerable.
:We talked about the Ferris-wheel scene inFear.
It was hot sex, but he was a terrible partner.
S.S.:And there was a moment of vulnerability for both of them.
And right before they got on the Ferris wheel, she raps in front of him.
We went back and forth about Nathan being afraid and that being his vulnerability.
But we were like, You cannot make this man afraid of a Ferris wheel.
:Uh-uh, he cant be no bitch.
:N- - - -s afraid of a Ferris wheel …
I.R.:Heights!
He was afraid of heights.
Im curious about the dynamics between the characters.
You have all these matchups Kelli and Tiffany, Issa and Molly, Molly and Andrew.
How are you determining how those characters function when theyre interacting with specific characters?
:Issa and Molly are always the center.
We decide, as an arc, what story we want to tell with them.
But we always start with them as a base, and every other character works around that.
That has always been the foundation of every character story.
:Their friendship is a real friendship.
It comes from a real place.
That was something Prentice and I were very clear about from season one.
We never wanted to take them to a place where they were frenemies.
We have a raw honesty with one another, but theres a base of love.
You have to know its coming from a place of love; otherwise, that friendship wont go anywhere.
It just comes down to how honest and vulnerable youre being with one another.
They had to be real friends; otherwise, youre not rooting for them.
Youre not wanting for their friendship to succeed in the end.
Why did you decide to make it smaller, cascading slights rather than one big blowout?
A.A.:It felt more realistic.
There was this hugeFuck Mollywe did not anticipate.
We didnt anticipate that response.
But I like how we did it.
I also think the response came from people seeing themselves in Molly and having a friendship like that.
:We also never pitted them against each other.
Its always the guys: Team Daniel, Team Lawrence.
We never made the audience pick between these two.
They might have had a disagreement in season one, but theyre still on the same side.
This was the first time they were not on the same side.
When we were in the room, we were thinking about the characters existing for three other seasons.
We felt that balanced it out.
Jason Lew:I mean, we had literal scorecards for all episodes.
Molly: 1, Issa: 1.
We were very intentional about what destroys a friendship.
:We had it at the top of each board.
:On top of every episode: experience, grief, or whatever.
K.Y.:Acceptance!
:Issa, did you just say you believe two of the stages of grief are experience and grief?
Laura, focus on what everybody else is saying, okay?
Whats the most difficult scene you worked on?
:Season four, episode six, which was post-block-party fight between Issa and Molly.
How can we allude to it without actually saying it?
It was a line we had to walk.
And then personally, I went through a very painful friend breakup in my late 20s.
Were still not friends.
It was sort of necessary to excavate that to write the scene effectively.
There was so much I wanted to explore in that moment.
I never felt like that.
Most other rooms, I feel it like,Im the one.
I never felt there was anything but respect and genuine curiosity and empathy onInsecure.
I skew more dramatic, so there was a lot of heaviness in that scene.
We never want to make anybody the villain.
Everyone has a different perspective, and they come at things from a different background.
What did you learn from working in the room?
:I learned the power of true authenticity.
Also it was such a joy to be able to talk in a way that I talk.
Can you expand on that?
:Season two is the first time we started playing with time.
Theyre crossing paths playing with time in a way that doesnt feel super-straight.
It really reared its head in the ghosting episode, when Issas talking to different versions of herself.
We hadnt done a voice-over since the pilot.
And watching Mirror Issa grow, right?
First she just raps in the mirror, and then this other Issa comes alive.
That didnt exist before.
:Issa in the bathroom mirror has been her true feelings, her raw self.
Are there any other Easter eggs in the show you feel viewers havent picked up on?
:One of the Easter eggs weve done consistently is characters speaking song lyrics.
Season one was Drake lyrics, season two was Frank Ocean lyrics.
I feel like one person got it.
One person tweeted me and was like, Is this the Easter egg?
:And twins, no?
:Oh and twins, of course!
Twins in every episode.
:It got weird really quickly.
S.S.:You know how I feel.
If we could do this again, Issa and Daniel would have been together all season three.
They would have been in a beautiful, loving relationship.
I speak for me and only me.
Lets do a quick poll, whos Team Daniel?
A.A.:But whos Team None of These N- - - -s?
:This feels familiar; we did a lot of voting in that room.
Jackson and Lew raise their hands.
:The show came down to voting.
:I see some new hands for Team Daniel
P.P.
:I do too!
:You were holding out on us all this time.
Theres apparently a difference between Daniel supporters and vocal Daniel supporters.
A.A.:Weve all changed sides.
:Also the difference between your favorite guy and your favorite guy for Issa.
Whats the most heated that you remember things getting?
:Mine was that Jared dont bring Molly no water season one.
And we came in to pitch the story and Prentice just went, No.
What else is he gonna give her, a new change of clothes?
Prentice was so angry he put on his jacket like he was going to leave us forever!
Like, A man would never do this!
He was like, But as a man, I would never.
:We really did.
:It wasnt kind.
He doesnt want her to get sick in his house!
How often do you bring conversations from social media to the writers room?
:In general, we have a rule about keeping social media out of the room.
We may have pop-cultural conversations like, Oh, did you see this video?
Season one, DJ Khaled was huge for us.
It aired during our racial uprisings.
We gave people this beautiful episode during this time where everything felt bleak.
And I knew we were going to have a season finale that was going to take peoples joy away.
I remember feeling,I dont wanna tell no sad dramatic stories here!
What have been some memorable table reads?
S.S.:I think he was vegan at that table read.
:He went like Whole30.
S.S.:He started eating meat for the show!
:That was also a day on set.
People came out of the woodwork to have an excuse to visit while he was filming that shirtless scene.
People who I never saw on set before or after that found a reason to be there.
I want to talk about Lawrences grocery-store threesome.
Laura, you wrote that episode.
:It was my buddy.
Lawrence was thinking he was ready to be back out there.
Nobody wants to watch a show about that guy having the best life.
Thats not a show, right?
Thats like Jays existence.
But Lawrence represents this Everyman in our show.
How do you dig into his insecurities?
How do you go underneath that?
Thats where it was coming from.
The character is also finding himself.
Actually, that episode is both Issa and Lawrence both back out in the world.
Shes at peace:Now Im gonna have my ho phase,and hes out there, too.
Its both of them having the experience of what its like to be single again.
Ive been thinking aboutInsecureand its place in the long history of television.
What are the influences youre pulling from to make it inform how these characters are relating to each other?
:Ill tell you one thing: We forgotThe Gameexisted.
J.L.:Headline.
A.A.:Beloved ComedyInsecureErasesThe Game.
But I dont remember letting other shows bleed into what we were thinking.
It would be concepts.
Just talking about life.
Its like, I bet youre wondering how I got here.
And then you back up and tell the story.
:Before Sunriseobviously influenced Issa and Nathans first date.
:We talked aboutThe Place Beyond the Pinesat some point.
:Oh, yeah!
That was gonna be our restaurant thing of just picking up where something left off.
What is the best line you wrote?
A.A.:Mine is My name is Greg.
I am a student.
Its the kid rapping in season one who cant finish his rap.
The ride breaks down, and Issa straddles Nathan.
It was a goofy Fran line I wrote for the room, fully expecting we would take it out.
I wrote that season two.
And later, she referred to them as the Secretaries ofGreat.
Whats the line that gets quoted most in the room?
:Anytime someone does a pitch that we like: I likes that.
A.A.:Ooh, and, What yall doing, eating tacos and kissing on the mouth?
Are Issa and Lawrence endgame?
Are they your OTP?
:Are they our ODB?
:One true pairing, Issa.
Have you never been a fan of a show?
:I was like,Are they our Ol Dirty Bastard?
:No, the OTP is Issa and Molly.
:I likes that.
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