Issa Rae lives by the advice that she received from the late Maya Angelou.
Rae took part in a panel discussion at the Create Canva/Building Creative Empires for Social Good event at SoFi Stadium.
According to PEOPLE, Lily Workneh asked Rae about the “one piece of advice that you wish someone had given you earlier.”
“My girl Maya says when someone shows you they are, believe them the first time,” Rae said. “If you have a feeling, obviously, your gut tells you everything you know.”
“Sometimes I’ve had situations where I have tried to give someone the benefit of the doubt,” she continued. “But I knew in the back of my mind, ‘Oh, this makes my shoulders tense,’ or there’s something that I just saw that might not be great, but I might be tripping,” she continued.
“If you see that one thing, if you see something, believe in yourself and figure something. I’ve given too many chances,” she added. “I do that more in business than I do in my personal life, which is kind of backwards because I want to [have] faith in people and … myself.”
Rae also said that her “proudest accomplishment” was using Insecure to open “the doors that are open for so many other writers and creators and producers and people who are doing amazing things now.”
“Most recently, [one of those things is] being able to make a studio movie, produce a studio movie, [with] a writer that I love, Syreeta Singleton. In a time when studio comedies aren’t getting made. And having the pressure of, if this doesn’t work, then they’re not going to make any other Black comedies. Especially one starring two Black women — and being able to make $50 million in theaters,” Rae said about One of Them Days, starring Keke Palmer and SZA.
“Now, having other opportunities to create more films, and in a sense, bring comedies back … I’m like, ‘Great,’ ” she added.