MADE FEATURES
it. Again, it’ about how God works things. I
One of the agents at CAA went to college
with Issa at Stanford. My agent reached out
to her and said, “Hey, can you introduce
Prentice to Issa?”. And my agent was like,
“Why don’t you write her a letter just to say
why you think you’re good for it?” and I was
like, “That’s a great idea.” I read the script
and thought it was amazing. And I wrote
her this letter about why I thought I would
be good for it. And obviously I was like, we
don’t get shows like this everyday and I was
like “I don’t want this to get f’d up”...this is
too important. And so, I was like “I don’t
know if I’ll be great, but I don’t want to mess
this up.” I met Issa at a book signing and she
was like “I read your letter”...and we just sat
and talked maybe a half hour after the book
signing was done and we just hit off.
ing relationship. So far, so good.
MADE: Any other insights you can give us
about Insecure?
PP: Hmm, I don’t want to give anything
away. I would say all of our talent is...
we wanted to use a lot of new talent. Our
talent is amazing. I think Jay Ellis is one a
lot of people will notice from The Game. I
think Jay is our biggest name. Yvonne Orji
who plays Molly is going to be a huge star.
Obviously Issa...Lisa Joy, who plays Issa’s
co-worker Frida. There’s also another actor
Alon Noel who was in The Hustle who plays
Daniel in the pilot. We have Amanda Seals
who’s in the show. It’s a show that is
obviously well timed for right now and I
think it’s important. I hope that people will
appreciate it in that way.
MADE: Wow. Was that awkward?
PP: It was never weird with us, it was never
awkward, we just hit it off really quick and
then pretty much from that point. I met with
her management company, the producers,
met with HBO and say by that Friday night
I got the job. I think one thing is that at the
end of the day it is her face on the poster, it’s
her show. She sold this show, HBO bought
her voice. I’m very protective that never gets
altered. If it was reversed, I would never
want somebody as a showrunner to come in
and try to get their shine off me. So there’s
no agenda on my side, her side, Lena’s side.
We all kind of work together to make the
show. We’re all respectful and supportive of
the role we bring as a collective to move the
show. But there’s no mistake that I always
want to be helpful and give her voice to be
clear in the show that’s first and foremost.
MADE: How do you stay true to keeping her
voice in t hings?
PP: So from that standpoint, it becomes “Why
this is the best way to do that” and she may
think this is the best way to do that. We will
dialogue about something. It all starts on a
mutual respect. Everything from there is how
you treat each other and go from there. So I
think that’s always important with any work-
When there’s
nobody telling
you that you’re
amazing, when
there’s nobody
saying you’re
great, when
there’s nobody
validating the
choices you’re
making, you
have to validate
those choices.”
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