Emmy-nominated actress Issa Rae opened up about the time a non-Black TV executive tried to block her talents from the small-screen.

“The executive was like, ‘Yes, I saw your show, funny stuff, funny stuff'” she said during a segment for Sunday night’s Emmy Awarrds. relating how the executive responded to the pitch of her third web series. After she thanked the executive for the compliment, the executive told Rae that he felt Black people wouldn’t want to see her show.

The executive, she said, told her Black audiences wanted to see “familiar faces” and she’d have to “switch up the characters.” As she said, “It just became very clear to me that he didn’t get the show.”

“I just remember fuming in that meeting like, ‘Why does he get to tell me what gets to be on TV?'” she said. “‘Why does he get to tell me what people like me like to see, when I’m here, I’m telling you what I wanna see–I made it.’ For me, that moment was the motivation I needed to keep doing what I was doing, to kinda bet on myself.”

“…And you know, one of us got fired after that,” she said.

Insecure is currently gearing up for its fifth season, which is aiming for a 2021 debut.

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Photo: Abc