Issa Rae Shares Her First On-Screen Kiss, Crush & More

No, I've said too much.

What do I use names, you're gonna bleep the names out.

[laughter]

[upbeat music]

Hi TeenVogue, I'm Issa Rae.

And today I'm sharing some of my firsts with you.

Well my first crush was in preschool.

I was really thirsty back then

and there was a boy named Clifton.

And I looked him up.

And he grew up to be fine, so I have great taste.

But he didn't have interest in me then

and he doesn't have interest in me now [pop].

My first celebrity crush was dark skinned Michael Jackson.

The first time I was ever really embarrassed?

There's just too many of those.

I think my mom, I was trying to show off

in front of everybody, and this,

I deserved it but I didn't.

It's still cruel, it still stings.

She was like, You need to get out of this room.

and then she was like, Uh, sometimes

I just want to get rid of you, and it just, wooo.

I was embarrassed, and I was hurt at the same time.

And you know I made her feel guilty for a minute.

My first word.

I don't know, does anybody know that?

I would probably say my first word was dada,

like all babies.

Oh my first CD is one that I stole.

You pay a cent and you get 12 CDs.

But they really send you six first

and you're supposed to pay the rest.

So my first one was probably Mase, Harlem World

'cause I couldn't listen to parental advisory

and I still have a black mark on my credit because of that.

Worth it.

My first job was when I was 10 years old

and it was to babysit cats for my neighbor.

And it's also how I discovered I was allergic to cats.

My first car was a Saturn, a gray Saturn.

It was a hand-me-down and I destroyed it

by running into one of those yellow parking poles.

Why the fuck was it there?

Whose fault was it really?

My first best friend, I feel like

I want to go back to preschool

but those are fake friendships.

My first hard-core best friend

is one that I'm still friends with

20 something years later, Devon Walker.

That's my girl, same birthday.

First vacation?

I mean it was probably to Senegal.

You know my dad's from there and so my mom

was really big on having us go back

and see where our roots were.

It was great minus the mosquitoes, the heat,

and people, my cousins, people, strangers,

stealing my toys and shit.

But otherwise it was a pleasure.

The first song I memorized all the words to,

I think it was Whitney Houston,

I Wanna Dance with Somebody at a very young age.

The first time I, this is embarrassing.

The first time I was really starstruck,

hear me out, okay?

It was the 90s, I was in middle school,

high school-ish, Can't Hardly Wait had come out,

and so I saw Jennifer Love Hewitt at the zoo.

I was a big Party of Five fan

so seeing Jennifer Love Hewitt at the zoo

and she was kicking it with Wilmer Valderrama,

is that how you say his name?

Don't want to give the T, but they were kicking it.

I was starstruck, I didn't say anything.

And I loved her so much, I just was satisfied

with seeing her out.

The first time I knew I wanted to work in films

was being on the set of Moesha

just as an audience member and seeing that play out.

So it's really like I wanted to break into TV

after seeing that and seeing how dope it was.

So thank you Brandy.

The first audition I ever went on

it was an open call audition for this show called,

was it, Boston Legal, Boston Public?

It was some teacher shit and all you had to do

was say a line to the teacher.

And I stood in line for six hours

outside in the heat I think at USC

and was prepared to say my one line and kill it.

And soon as I got up there my stupid ass

looked in the camera and delivered my lines

and they were just like, Thanks so much.

And I wasn't on that show.

But it got canceled so, [laughs].

Sorry, you don't deserve that.

My first red carpet was Essence Black Women in Hollywood.

It was the most intimidating thing ever

'cause all my heroes were there.

So intimidating that I tried to skip it.

And I skipped it and then someone caught me

and they were like, You better go out there

and get your red carpet moment, you belong here.

And it was the best ever.

Well not the pictures, the pictures turned out terrible,

but the experience was great.

The first scene I ever wrote for Awkward Black Girl

was the driving scene.

I experienced it multiple times of being on the road,

seeing someone I know, being excited initially like, oh hey,

and then realizing oh, we're at the same light again,

here we go, do we keep acknowledging each other every time?

And so that was the first scene

that I actually wrote for the series.

The first time I ever realized I was famous was,

and this was light, but I felt like I was a big deal,

was going to Ava DuVernay's first movie screening.

It was I Will Follow and she was greeting everybody

who was coming into the lobby and I was like, Hey.

And she was like, I know you.

I was like, You know me?

She was like, Yeah, I saw your web series,

it's really funny, keep it up.

and I was only two three months into

doing Awkward Black Girl.

So shout out to Ava for making me feel special and famous.

The first time I ever questioned my career path

was probably in 2009, 2010.

I mean I still question my career path,

what am I talking about, but the first time was,

it was just really hard to break in

and I just kept on hearing no.

And I kept on being discouraged

from one particular project that I tried to keep pushing

and was like let me finally just do

what my dad wants me to do and go to business school.

But I didn't.

If I earned $1 billion the first thing I would do

is hide that shit.

I'm not telling anybody, nobody would know.

My first pet was a hamster named Nosey

who died of constipation.

Well we were literally pulling the shit out of him.

[laughs] We were, he was suffering,

he was sitting there wheezing and we were like

what's happening and then literally

kept on trying to pull it and then the little shit pellets,

[laughter]

this is true y'all.

I think he died from the pain of it.

Wow, all of you guys are going to hell.

[laughter]

Oh, the first movie that I ever remember seeing

is probably Splash.

I love Tom Hanks so much and I think live action,

loving a movie was Splash.

The first role model I ever had

I'm gonna have to just say my mom.

Like who else do you have to look to?

It wasn't gonna be my older brothers 'cause they were trash.

So yeah, she was the best role model to me.

She taught me how to be myself.

The first makeup that I ever bought was,

it was a L'Oreal foundation, in college

and I just was, I was a college freshman

and I was not equipped and I put that shit

on my face like lotion.

It was just shining all night.

None of my friends told me, they weren't my friends.

My first on-screen kiss was actually,

I don't want y'all to go back and look at it.

So I don't really want to tell you

but it was in my web series and it wasn't great.

We'd been building up to it,

I think I was psyching myself out.

It was a very awkward kiss but appropriately so.

My first real kiss, ooooh bitch.

My first real kiss was in the sixth grade

and it is still a triumphant, trashy moment for me.

It was during a summer camps and the first day

we got to that camp I was like, ooh that boy is fine.

Was not checking for me at all

and everybody else was checking for him.

And he ended up getting with this girl

who was also in the camp who was like

two years older than me, she was 14, I was 12.

So I was like, oh fuck, lost that.

We have a dance the last day,

I don't know where she was at, slipping,

because whatever he asked me,

he asked to dance with me and then he was like,

Do you wanna go outside?

and I was like, Yeah, I wannna go outside.

and we went outside and he kissed me.

But then a couple months later,

I thought I was big and bad, went to

the Magic Johnson theaters to watch a movie,

who do I see walk in?

Jordan and his girlfriend and he pretended

like he didn't know me and she sized me up.

I thought she was gonna punch me right there,

like she knew everything.

But she didn't want to step to me.

Well I hope you learned enough about me.

Thank you so much for watching.

Go ahead and talk shit about me everywhere.