Issa Rae reveals it only cost $25 to launch her career on YouTube

Issa Rae reflects on the rise of her career through YouTube and what it took to bet on her dream in the 2010s.

Issa Rae has come a long way from the days of her YouTube series “Awkward Black Girl,” but without the guts to upload and $25, she may not have ever realized her dream.

During a recent appearance on “Aspire,” hosted by Emma Grede, the 41-year-old award-winning writer and producer reflected on the early days of her career and what it took to launch the first season of her series on YouTube in the early 2010s.

“The first episode of ‘Awkward Black Girl’ cost $25,” she recalled in a clip from the podcast, adding with a laugh that it was the amount she spent treating her collaborators to Qdoba after filming wrapped.

“It was self-funded at first,” she continued. “But then over time, of course, as we started expanding and we got a crew, then it was like these people are donating their time, I have to pay them.”

She launched a Kickstarter campaign before Pharrell Williams famously funded her second season of the series, which she would later both write a memoir “The Misadventures of the Awkward Black Girl” and adapt into the hit show “Insecure” on HBO.

After launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund the series, Rae caught Pharrell Williams’ attention, and he famously backed its second season. She later expanded the web series into a memoir, “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl,” before adapting it into the Emmy-nominated HBO hit “Insecure.” The show starred Rae alongside Yvonne Orji, Jay Ellis, Natasha Rothwell, and Amanda Seales, and ran for five seasons from 2016 through 2021.

“It was a challenge,” she admitted of those early days before Williams and HBO came calling. “But people were forgiving. And you say that it was a risk, but it was just online.”

She noted there were “no expectations” surrounding her, YouTube shows, or the project at the time.

“So people were like, ‘Oh, I’ll try this thing out. This is cute. We don’t know who she is. Well, it’s actually kind of good,’” she explained, adding that the only real risk she felt was starring in the series herself.

“I only put myself in it because I was scared that someone else was gonna do it and take the idea,” she said. “I wanted someone else to be in it.”

Looking back, she said the scariest part was how much the series felt like she was personally putting herself out there.

“I guess it felt like a big deal at the time, but looking back, I’m like, ‘you weren’t taking no risk. You were just putting something online,’” she said.