Issa Rae initially worried her body wasn’t ‘Barbie-ready’ for the Barbie movie

In some ways, I was made hyperaware of my Blackness because of how intense my mom and aunt were about, “We’re giving you Black Barbies.” [At the time I was] like, “Okay, I mean, I have white…okay, sure, whatever. I don’t care.” They said, “It’s important for you to play with dolls that look like you,” which I didn’t really understand. I was like, “Okay, more toys, thank you.” But some kids would say, “Oh, you’re still playing with Barbies? You’re a baby.” So I would say, “Oh no, I don’t. I hate Barbies.” Then it became cool to shit on Barbie. I wanted to play with the dolls in public with friends, but for the most part, outside of close cousins who didn’t judge each other, I was playing in private. They served as ways to role-play in various ways.

I never played with Christie. I don’t think I knew about Christie until later. It was just Barbie with blackface kind of, and it didn’t necessarily have Black features. It didn’t really mean anything to me until I got older and understood why it was so important for my mom and aunt for me to have this.

I remember at one point I renamed my Ken doll Peter, who just happened to be a Jewish guy, because I didn’t think Jews existed in Barbie’s world and I wanted my Barbie to be able to marry someone of the same faith as me.

You were hyperaware that Ken was not Jewish.

Exactly. There are not many blonde Jews, but in my world, blonde Ken/Peter was. [Laughs.]

That’s so dope.

Did you have any storylines that you came up with for your Barbies?

For sure. I had 90210 Barbies, but I couldn’t watch 90210. My mom wouldn’t let me, but she still got me some of the Barbies. I didn’t know their names. I just knew they were in this show. I probably renamed them wrong, but I was doing what I thought were 90210 plot lines since I couldn’t watch it. There was always a love triangle of some sort with my Barbies. I loved businesses, so Barbie had a restaurant and there was chaos there. I didn’t get many of the houses, so I had to always turn the Lego house into a Barbie house, which just didn’t work. It was just a lot of imagination. You’re playing God in a way…running their lives, and there was so much fun in that for me.

Meanwhile, I sometimes think people who aren’t in the entertainment industry view Hollywood like Barbie Land—all glitz and glamour. But just like Barbie and Ken, sometimes you want to escape it; a lot of people come to LA and find a world that doesn’t quite exist as they imagined it. Does that seem like an accurate parallel?

I completely get what you’re saying. On the Barbie Land side, I will say that, yes, it’s what people think Hollywood is, but Barbie Land is perfect for Barbies. I think any world that is perfect may not be perfect for somebody else. It may not be perfect for everyone who’s there, but generally, yes, I’d imagine that it’s the best version of Hollywood and super, super liberal, of course. One of my pet peeves is that people think I’m hanging out and not working [here in Hollywood] because it does feel like—to your point—that you’re at events or in magazines or on a talk show having fun. That’s part of it. I love those parts sometimes, but there’s so much work to stay afloat. You know how ducks float and you don’t see their feet pedalling? That’s what I feel like all the time. It’s just like, What’s next? I don’t want people to see that necessarily. I don’t want them to know how much I’m struggling and all my career insecurities and the like, because they’re also high-class problems. It’s navigating that too. We’re all going through different struggles, and we all have different perceptions. My friend is a lawyer, and I think she’s doing trials all day. She’s like, “No, girl. Most of my stuff is paperwork….” I think that’s just human nature. We’re full of assumptions.