Issa Rae received the Entertainment Entrepreneur of the Year Award at Variety's L.A. Power of Women event, held Wednesday at The Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. The honor was presented by Courtney Kelso, senior executive vice president at U.S. Bank, who told the crowd that Rae has "put her own community here in L.A. front and center across her incredible ventures." The event was billed as the Variety Power of Women LA 2026, presented by Lifetime.
Rae, an Emmy-nominated actress, writer, producer and entrepreneur, is best known for creating, executive producing and starring in HBO's "Insecure," which concluded in 2021.
During her acceptance speech, Rae joked that she hadn't prepared anything inspirational, saying she'd been distracted by "the industry [eating] itself," along with climate disasters, politics and the rise of AI. She drew laughs by placing blame on a specific group: "This is all men's fault. Rich, white men to be specific." She added, "It is hard to feel like a powerful woman when men keep fucking everything up."
Shifting to a more serious tone, Rae acknowledged that "it's hard to feel inspired when you feel helpless and useless," a feeling she said she experiences often as a writer. Still, she said she has learned to focus on what she can control. "I can decide who I'm around, who I work with, who I champion, who I invest in, whose stories I tell, who I platform, who I respond to," she said. "I can use the power I do have to pour into my little community to make sure whatever success I'm lucky enough to have doesn't stop with me."
She went on to say that even when "tired, pissed off or deeply uninspired by what's happening around me," she remains committed to finding ways to be useful. She closed by telling the audience, "Maybe that's all any of us can do — is just figure out where we have some power and use it the fuck for good, please. So that's what I'm going to do. I hope you guys do too."
Rae's on-screen work includes Greta Gerwig's "Barbie," Cord Jefferson's "American Fiction," the "Black Mirror" episode "Hotel Reverie" and "A Black Lady Sketch Show," which she also executive produced. She voices Jessica Drew in Sony Pictures' "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" and plays Angela in the HBO Max series "Young Love." As a producer, she worked on the 2023 film "Gray Matter," executive produced the HBO Max series "Rap Sh!t," and produced "One of Them Days," starring Keke Palmer and SZA. She is also set to write and executive produce an untitled HBO comedy pilot centered on male friendship.
Photo: Bea Phi, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
