MadameNoire
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Issa Rae is having the time of her life. She is living the newlywed life, tying the knot with her longtime love Louis Diame last month. She is also premiering for the farewell season of Insecure on October 24, a bittersweet ending to a how that catapulted her career. Now that she is a megastar, it’s been a priority of hers to maintain a work life balance that includes keeping her personal life from the public eye.
The Los Angeles, California native told Self Magazine it’s imperative that she maintain her peace by not being so open with the world.
“I think the little time I’ve been in the industry, I’ve witnessed how so many people who are front-facing don’t have a peace and aren’t at peace, and that’s always been troubling to me,” she explained. “In this age of social media, where I was an avid user, I would share so much of myself, of my friend group, and it was fun because it felt like [it was] just among my friends. The more I started to seep out, the more I felt like people took ownership of me and my decisions and things that I did. That’s just not something that sat right with me, and I found that I don’t like to be the subject of conversations that I don’t initiate. There’s just something uncomfortable about that.”
These feelings played a role in how she shared the news that she had married Diame.
“I still try to be private about my personal life, but that was something that I knew was going to be shared, and I just wanted to share it on my own terms,” she said.
She said it’s also been a struggle to navigate her decades-long friendships with such a hectic schedule.
“It’s really disheartening to realize, ‘Oh, we have to really, really make an effort to see one another,’” she added. “I just reached out to my group chat of friends to be like, ‘Can we at least have a standing brunch or dinner once a month?’ and everybody was down, and then I was like, ‘Oh, s***, I’m going to be out of town. I’m going to be gone.’ That’s so f****** whack.”
When it comes to adding children to her very full life, she said she isn’t sure if that’s in her future.
“I like my life, I like this selfishness, and I know that I have a window,” she said. “I’ve always felt that way, that women, Black women especially—unless you’re Viola Davis or Angela Bassett—you have a window when people are going to want to continue to see you and see what you can do. Then there are so many limitations placed upon you, and that does keep me up. I want to do as much as I can while I still can. I know it’s not the proper mentality to think that kids will slow you down, but I do feel that way.”
