Issa Rae
Actor, Writer & Producer
Creator and star of Insecure who called her Black Mirror episode about an actress licensing her likeness into an AI film “what we’re fighting against, and the worst-case scenario” — adding, of AI recreation, “I’m completely against it.”
In her words
It just felt like, “Oh, this is what we’re fighting against, and this is the worst-case scenario of what we anticipate.”
I’m completely against it.
Biography
Issa Rae (born 1985) parlayed her web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl into Insecure, the Peabody-winning HBO comedy she created, wrote, and starred in for five seasons. Through her company Hoorae Media she has become one of Hollywood’s most influential producer-stars — and a pointed critic of where AI could take the industry.
Living the worst-case scenario
In Black Mirror’s 2025 episode “Hotel Reverie,” Rae plays a modern movie star who licenses her likeness into an AI-driven remake of a classic film — and gets trapped inside it. Discussing the role with TV Insider, she said the script, arriving right after the 2023 strikes in which SAG-AFTRA and the writers fought over AI, “felt like, ‘Oh, this is what we’re fighting against, and this is the worst-case scenario of what we anticipate.’”
Rae went further than dramatizing the fear: asked about studios using AI to recreate performances or insert contemporary actors into classic films, she said “I’m completely against it,” calling the practice a violation of the original work — and warning that the technology “would eliminate so many jobs.” On Marie Claire’s Nice Talk podcast in 2025 she widened the lens, voicing unease that a handful of tech billionaires steering AI are “dictating so much of our lives” and predicting that some form of rebellion against that concentration of power is coming.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/issa-rae