Get the latest gossip
Issa Rae on Black TV History: ‘They Built the Success of Their Networks on Our Backs, and We Almost Don’t Have Anything to Show For It’
Issa Rae discussed the motivations behind her upcoming HBO docuseries 'Seen & Heard,' which chronicles the history of Black TV, at SXSW.
The moderator, Rotten Tomatoes’ Jacqueline Coley, described the first episode of “Seen & Heard” as focusing on how studios in the past “used Black audiences” and then “abandoned them as soon as it was convenient.” Rae said she wanted to dive into that history because “it sounds like a conspiracy” on the surface, but producing the documentary proved to her just how that trend had played out. Television giants like Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, Norman Lear and more appear throughout the series, and while their careers are already well-documented, Rae said several of them revealed unknown aspects of trajectories in their interviews. “To be able to get Oprah, to be able to give Mara Brock Akil her flowers, to be able to have Tyler Perry talk about his journey creating a studio that so many of us aspire to — watching it myself and hearing some of these stories for the first time inspires me.
Or read this on Variety
