It has been 10 years since Insecure premiered on HBO and changed what Black television looked like. In that decade, the show has gone from HBO original to a cultural touchstone that continues to find new audiences on Max, where it is currently streaming in full.
The questions have never stopped. The love has never cooled. And now, Issa Rae and former showrunner Prentice Penny are giving the people what they have been asking for: the full story.
Blocc Party, the official Insecure rewatch podcast, is live on YouTube now. The series is hosted by Rae and Penny, walking through the show episode by episode, unpacking behind-the-scenes stories, writer’s room moments, and the real version of how one of our favorite Black shows actually got made.
“We talked a lot about the show, but we didn’t get to delve deep into it. And a lot of sh*t was cut out,” Rae said in the opener. “So this is going to be the raw. The real. Real as f***.”
Insecure has found a second wave of cultural relevance as the show continues to be discovered by younger viewers, people who were in middle school when it premiered and are now watching it as if it is a new release. Rae and Penny both acknowledged being regularly approached by fans asking for more.
“People are discovering it as if it’s like a new thing,” Penny said. “So it was like, oh man, this was the right time where we could talk longer than the wind-downs. We could give people the hour long [content] they’ve been asking for.”
For both of them, the end of the show left a particular kind of quiet. Penny described missing the constant barrage of communications that comes with making a television show. Rae, who admitted she had been “fronting” that she couldn’t wait for it to be over, broke down crying in the van on her way to shoot her final scenes alongside Yvonne Orji.
Blocc Party is, in part, a way back into that world, and a chance to finally say what couldn’t be said while cameras were still rolling.
The first episode of Blocc Party covers the origin of Insecure in a way that the show’s own behind-the-scenes coverage never fully captured.
Rae revealed that the original pitch was much more narrowly focused on We Got Y’all, the nonprofit organization where her character worked. The shift toward centering Issa and Molly came from HBO executives Casey Bloys and Amy Gravitt, who kept hearing Issa talk about her best friend in meetings and wanted more of that dynamic at the center of the show.
“Molly was based off of my best friend, and it’s no secret now. I would always come into the meetings like talking about her, and they just loved hearing stories about her. They were like, ‘What if the show was centered around them?’” Rae said.
She also revealed that Lawrence (Jay Ellis), one of the most discussed characters in the show’s history, was not in the original pilot. He was added. And Daniel, Issa’s love interest, was originally named Donnell until that name didn’t clear for rights purposes. “R.I.P. Donnell King,” Rae said. “He sounds fine. But Donnell King was fine too.”
The story of how Penny came to be the showrunner of Insecure is interesting. Penny first heard about Rae from his mother, who recognized her as a Black girl from their neighborhood, the View Park and Leimert Park area of Los Angeles, who was making a web series. He was working on Brooklyn Nine-Nine at the time and, by his own account, was feeling the isolation of being the only Black voice in predominantly white writers’ rooms.
“I just miss working with Black people,” he said. “And so when I saw the thing that Larry [Wilmore] was leaving and it was like looking for a new showrunner, I called my agent.”
He read the script and fell in love with it. Then he wrote Rae a letter. “Who’s this old n**** sending me a letter?” Rae recalled. “I didn’t know you were old yet. I was like, ‘Okay, let me look him up.’”
Penny showed up to her book signing for Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl, they talked outside for 20 minutes, and something clicked. Penny admitted she never watched the rest of Awkward Black Girl before making her decision. He admitted something even more revealing: he had never fully watched Awkward Black Girl before leaving Brooklyn Nine-Nine to commit to the show.
“I quit a full job at Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I didn’t know this woman could act. I banked my whole future,” he said. “I really wasn’t thinking about you acting in it. I was just like, the script is so good. And then I was like, oh, I should probably watch the thing.”
It wasn’t until auditions, Penny said, that he had his first real confirmation the show was going to work. “I had little moments where I was like, ‘Oh, oh, oh.’”
The most unexpected revelation in the first episode involves the pilot’s original director prospect: Chris Rock. HBO wanted Rock to direct, fresh off the success of Top 5. Rae was flown to New York first class, her first time in first class, to meet him at the Mandarin Hotel. She came back unconvinced.
Her concern was practical and fundamental: Rock was based in New York and wanted to shoot interiors there, faking Los Angeles for New York. Rae’s show was specifically, insistently, unapologetically an L.A. show. She knew it was wrong but felt the particular pressure that Black creators often feel, not wanting to rock a boat they had fought to get onto.
Rae called Rock. He called her simultaneously. His voicemail said he was going through a lot and couldn’t commit. She was relieved.
Years later, at a party in Atlanta during Insecure’s second season, Rock told her: “Insecure is great. I would have f***ed your sh*t up.”
The podcast is available now on YouTube. New episodes will cover the series episode by episode, with guests from the cast and writers’ room joining Issa and Prentice throughout the run.
