How Issa Rae secured success: Create what you’re passionate about

Actor, producer, and entrepreneur Issa Rae has several businesses under her belt already, and now she has partnered with Gallo to launch her own prosecco line, Viarae. We chatted about her business ventures, and how she decides which creative projects to pursue. It comes down to backing things that she loves and/or needs. When she wanted to start a coffee business, for example, it was because she wanted a coffee shop in her neighborhood—specifically to have a place where she could write all the time, but there was never one nearby. So, she helped found Hilltop Coffee and Kitchen. She’s also the co-owner of Sienna Naturals because she said she prefers to wear her hair naturally but taking care of it is very hard. Other projects involve making her production company, Hoorae, an all-encompassing ecosystem, and recently teaming up with Adam McKay to adapt the New York Times’ podcast series, Nice White Parents, into an HBO series.

On the WGA and SAG strikes, she says it was tough with the work stoppage and not being able to talk about her creative projects, but she fully supported them. And now, she says, she’ll have to navigate what to create next because everything is going to have to be high concept, and there will be fewer diverse shows. That will result in fewer casting opportunities, too: “While the writers were able to fight for more minimum staffing rooms, that means there’s less stuff to work on because everything is so expensive. In the same way that [the] ’90s to the 2000s had fewer diverse shows on the air, I think that’s for sure going to be a casualty of it all,” she explains.

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