Insecure, the award-winning, critically acclaimed, insanely relatable HBO series, is all about what it means to be a Black woman in America. But at its core, it's about friendship and the complicated sisterhood of the travelling angst between Yvonne Orji’s Molly Carter and Issa Rae’s Issa Dee. And in the latest episode of Go Off, Sis, the podcast from Refinery29’s Unbothered, done in partnership with Target, the hosts kiki with Orji, comedian and author of Bamboozled By Jesus: How God Tricked Me Into the Life of My Dreams, about her polarising (albeit, realistic) onscreen character.
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“I remember telling Issa, Molly is probably who I would’ve been if I didn’t get saved at 17,” laughs Orji, who believes most people see Molly as problematic because they used to be her at some point in their lives. For the Nigerian-American actress, being the drama-magnet bestie was unfamiliar territory. “I was like, I don’t know the fullness of who she is, but I’m excited to tap in because I don’t know this chick.”
Kathleen Newman-Bremang, Unbothered senior editor and co-host, notes that viewers haven’t seen a prickly Black female friendship since Joan and Toni on Girlfriends. But Orji thinks that the storylines hit because they’re borrowed from the actors’ and writers’ lives — dating drama and weird text messages are talked about and then cleverly woven into the season. “The reliability of the friend group comes because these aren’t fictitious people, these aren’t characters,” Orji shares.
To hear the hosts and Orji chat about Molly’s mistakes and the rules of savagery, listen to the full episode below.
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