Issa Rae Says Her ‘Impulsivity’ Nearly ‘Cost Me Every Single Dollar’

Issa Rae is reflecting on the personal trait that has shaped both her successes and struggles.

In her new essay collection, I Should Be Smarter Now, the Barbie star, 40, revealed that she went through a tough time while trying to work her way up in Hollywood before finally seeing some success.

“My impulsivity, the character trait I’ve benefited from and paid dearly for, is both a gift and a curse,” Rae wrote, per Us Weekly.

“The gift is that I can be fearless in the pursuit of anything I want to achieve. If I want something, I’m going to be active and go after it,” she explained. “The curse is, of course, that I don’t properly think through the consequences of my actions.”

“Some creatives can’t get their projects off the ground because they overthink. I’m an underthinker,” she added. The best example of this cost me every single dollar I had ever made in my life.”

The Insecure creator then went on to give an example of this, saying that she took several missteps when she and her ColorCreative producing partner, Deniese Davis, worked together to try to launch three TV pilots simultaneously in 2014 — without finding money to back them.

Rae said that she despite having had “a few web series” under her belt, they weren’t “getting many bites” from investors for their new projects. However, they went ahead anyway and “started soliciting scripts and meeting writers.”

“I was so excited about our undeniable idea and confident that we eventually would, so we proceeded anyway,” she explained in her essays. “We found some really great scripts that, to me, were filling a void in television.”

They still needed funding, so Rae said she reached out to a “rich ex” to help since he “was always interested in investing in film and TV.” She said he promised to foot “at least one-third of the money,” so she and Davis kept “pushing this forward.”

This proved to be a fatal error, as Rae said she “got into a fight with said ex a week before we were scheduled to shoot,” and he backed out financially after they had “gotten polite passes from most of the studios we had met with.” 

“The real mistake was not pulling the plug when I knew I didn’t have the money and that all of the costs would be falling on me. Let me tell you what I didn’t have in my bank account: $150,000,” Rae said. 

“I had about half of that because I had received part of the advance for my first book. Most of it was in my savings — it was all the money I had ever made in my life up until that point,” she added.

This led to a call from her business manager who informed her that “every penny” she had ever “saved” was “about to be gone” in order to fund the production of the three pilots she and Davis were working on.

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While all three of the pilots never found a home, they did help fuel Rae and Davis to continue their work with ColorCreative, which eventually found the creator and actress commercial success.

I Should Be Smarter Now is now available to purchase.