The character Tasha (played by Dominique Perry) on Insecure is polarizing — she exists purely as an obstacle for Issa (Issa Rae) and Lawrence (Jay Ellis) to overcome. She's the "other woman" in this HBO love triangle, and that makes her imminently hateable. The animosity towards Tasha has gotten so bad that, according to Perry herself, fans of the show are sending hate mail to the actress.
"I get so much hate mail," the Texas native told Essence. "I've even had a girl be like, 'Oh, my God, you know I want to fight you, right?'"
To all the rabid fans out there: Tasha is a fictitious person. Dominique Perry is not, in fact, a Los Angeles bank teller struggling with a new relationship. That being said, though, Tasha doesn't deserve to be the object of such hate. As my colleague Sesali Bowen wrote after the season premiere, Tasha never did anything wrong; Lawrence didn't cheat on Issa with her. This isn't even really about Tasha. The vitriol towards her is indicative of a more insidious trend: in the words of Bowen, "The idea that women are inherently in competition with other women over the attention of men."
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The people behind the show — which include Issa Rae herself — seem to know this. In a "Wine Down" after show for the second season, showrunner Prentice Penny said that Rae is very "protective" of the Tasha character.
"I think [I'm protective] because the instinct is to always pit the women against one another," Rae explained. "I'm always like, look at the dude! Look at the relationship. Look at what you did."
Season two Tasha is already a different character — now that she's directly involved with Lawrence, she's become a fully realized person. Perry told Essence that Tasha's story will only continue to develop, although she couldn't reveal too much.
"You definitely will learn a lot more about [Tasha]," Perry divulged. "I can't say too much more, but you will learn a lot about her, which is good because they really went in depth with Tasha, tried to give her her backstory and things like that. Hopefully people will learn to love her more or people will hate her more. We'll just see what happens with that. But it will be a lot of surprises."
Fingers crossed that with season two developments, Tasha stops being the punching bag of Insecure.
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