Issa Rae Is Making a New ’90s Period Drama for HBO
Insecure star and creator Issa Rae is collaborating with Angela Flournoy to develop the series.
While HBO’s Insecure just wrapped its second season in September and will be moving forward with a third next year, Issa Rae is not taking any time off. In addition to her roles as leading lady and Covergirl, Rae is currently developing a new period drama for the premium cable giant with an up-and-coming writer.
Deadline reports that Issa Rae will executive produce an untitled ’90s Los Angeles set drama for HBO, with Angela Flournoy attached as a writer and executive producer for the project. A black family consisting of a Los Angeles real estate agent, a LAPD recruit, and their teenage son and daughter will be the focus of the still-developing series. Having handled contemporary issues such as workplace discrimination and seeking professional help from a therapist with levity and grace on Insecure, this upcoming HBO project will not shy away from tough topics associated with the time period. Specific incidents as episodic plots have yet to be ironed out, but Rae and Flournoy’s project will tackle the socio political turbulence and cultural dissonance that took place in Los Angeles during the 1990s.
Issa Rae has been a longtime fan of Angela Flournoy, telling Deadline she is “thrilled” to take on the project together. Flournoy, an alumna of the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop and the University of Southern California, made waves in the literary scene when her debut novel, The Turner House, was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2015. The Turner House is loosely inspired by Flournoy’s family’s history, spanning the lives of three generations of one family living in Detroit from the 1920s through the 1980s. Despite having never written for television before Flournoy has always held onto the goal of storytelling for the screen. She shared the announcement of the upcoming HBO project on social media, telling her Instagram followers, “dreams don’t die, they just sometimes go dormant until we’re ready for them.”
Related: Issa Rae Has a Great Idea for an All-Black Gossip Girl
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