Issa Rae Discusses Lawrence and Issa’s Future on ‘Insecure’

Via Entertainment Weekly, Issa opens up about where Lawrence and Issa can possibly go from that heartbreaking season finale:

On coming to the decision in the writers’ room that Lawrence would leave Issa

This was also something we discussed in the room. The idea of a woman cheating is so bewildering for a lot of men; like it’s a huge mark of betrayal for them in a way that’s kind of a double standard. I remember writing a film when I was younger and part of it had a woman cheating for reasons of lust and weakness. The executive who read it told me that a lead woman could not cheat because it makes them immediately unlikeable. He strongly believed that women could not come back from cheating and I remember thinking how unfair that was, because I watched shows and movies where women forgive men for cheating all…the…time. It was also important to me to have Issa cheat precisely at a moment where Lawrence wasn’t necessarily at fault; where it wasn’t about him, it was about her. I think we always think that a man has to do something for a woman to cheat, and this was very much about Issa and her decision to be “aggressively active” for once. She just failed to think about what she would lose in the process.

But even discussing it in the room, a lot of men felt like Lawrence would not be ready to take her back so easily — he never imagined that Issa, the woman he had grown to love and trust, would do this to him and would not be ready to take her back so easily. For that final scene where he goes back to his complex, seeing Thug Yoda and the old couch, then stepping into his old apartment felt like a regression to him. In a way, he would rather leave than face the hurt and Issa’s transgressions. I think for him, being in that environment, knowing that he had vowed to commit to this girl just a month or two before, was just too much to forgive at that point.

On what’s next for Lawrence and Issa

I think we saw Issa at the beginning of this season decide to take life into her own hands and be active at all costs. We saw her make some pretty selfish and harmful decisions as result and, as the season progressed, we saw her appreciate some of what she already had in her life and to see her own fault in the things that weren’t going her way. I think this next season will see her start to ask more introspective questions. I think the break up will hit both Lawrence and Issa pretty hard and I think break-ups are rarely ever clean, especially for couples who lived together. So we know that Lawrence won’t be completely out of her life forever. We’re also really excited to develop what Issa and Molly possibly being single together looks like.