Rae has also starred in feature films, with roles in the drama The Hate U Give ; the fantasy comedy Little ; the romance The Photograph ; the romantic comedy The Lovebirds ; the comedy thriller Vengeance ; and the comedies Barbie and American Fiction both , receiving nominations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and Critics' Choice Movie Awards with the cast. In and , Rae was included in the annual Time list of the most influential people in the world , [ 11 ] [ 12 ] and in in the Forbes ' 30 Under 30 ' list in the entertainment section.
Her father has a medical practice in Inglewood, California. The family lived in Dakar , Senegal, [ 1 ] during some of her childhood. When Rae was in sixth grade, her family moved to the affluent View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she attended a predominantly black middle school. As a college student, she made music videos, wrote and directed plays, and created a mock reality series called Dorm Diaries for fun.
Rae worked odd jobs and at one point was struggling to decide between business school and law school , but abandoned both prospects when Awkward Black Girl gained wider popularity in The story is told through a first-person narrative as J usually reveals how she feels about her circumstances through voice-over or dream sequence.
The series went viral through word of mouth, blog posts, and social media, resulting in mainstream media coverage and attention. Rae created Awkward Black Girl because she felt the Hollywood stereotypes of African-American women were limiting and she could not relate to them:.
I've always had an issue with the [assumption] that people of color, and black people especially, aren't relatable. I know we are. By using YouTube as her forum, Rae was able to have autonomy of her work because she writes, films, produces, and edits most of her work. Rae's other showsβ Ratchet Piece Theater , The "F" Word , Roomieloverfriends , and The Choir , among othersβalso focus on African-American experiences that are often not portrayed in the mainstream media. In , Rae began working on a comedy series pilot with Larry Wilmore , in which she would star.
