EXCLUSIVE: Insecure’s Executive Producer Prentice Penny On Issa vs Molly, Condola’s Pregnancy & Hiring Black Creatives

EXCLUSIVE: Insecure’s Executive Producer Prentice Penny On Issa vs Molly, Condola’s Pregnancy & Hiring Black Creatives

Social media is still on fire after the hit HBO series, “Insecure,” shocked fans with its roller coaster ride of a season finale. Executive Producer and Show runner, Prentice Penny, may not be entertaining conversations about lengthening the show to an hour, but he spilled the beans about whether he’s Team Issa or Molly, the crew’s favorite moments from this season, and the fate of season five during an exclusive interview on theJasmineBRAND’s “For More Details” interview series.

Amanda Seales and ‘Insecure’ Co-stars Yvonne Orji, Issa Rae, and Natasha Rothwell

Prentice Penny shares some of his favorite season four moments:

“All of my moment are the little slights and the little hurts that their characters go through. Like the block party was one of my favorites just because…they come into the episode with a little bit of a rub, but when you watch it and they’re wobbling and you see Molly bringing her the food and you see them dancing, you’re like, ‘Oh, they’re gonna fix it!’ And you can see that they’re good together. But then just to watch where it just goes left…these are special friendships and don’t take them for granted…We really got excited when we said what if we start out the season where Issa says, ‘Oh, I don’t f*ck with Molly.’ And then we had to figure out how we get there. That was just an exciting mystery- to be like, ‘D*mn, what would make these two people who have been friends forever not mess with each other no more?’ So that just became really exciting to explore that idea.”

He says Issa Rae and crew were surprised at fans’ reactions to Molly’s controversial friendship patterns:

“A lot of us were very surprised at how quick people turned on Molly. The audience has never had to choose Issa or Molly. That audience has either been Team Lawrence or Daniel or Nathan- or whatever guy. But you’re never Team Not-The-Friendship…the way we looked at it was they’re kind of 50/50 responsible for this…I think more people are Molly’s than they care to admit!”

Prentice Penny revealed his reason for writing in a pregnancy between Lawrence and Condola at the height of his reconciliation with Issa:

“We’d really taken Lawrence from season one where he’s on the couch, working at Best Buy to where he is now. And it’s like, ‘How do you continue to make this character more complex- or a little bit more flawed?’…Life doesn’t always come in the way that you want, so how do you wrestle with it when it doesn’t?…I think Christina [Elmore] was like, ‘Wow!’ And I think Jay [Ellis] was like, ‘Wow!’ too!…but it was a little crazy because he was having a baby in real life!”

He says “Insecure” is a making a change in Hollywood simply by employing Black creatives:

“One of the things – just from an immediate standpoint – that I’m trying to do is obviously in the art I’m trying to create…I think the beauty of that is that in our show specifically, most of our writing staff is all Black. Heavy Black women as well, and giving Black directors opportunities…the department heads, too- because that’s where the hiring happens.”

Season five of “Insecure” won’t necessarily focus on COVID-19 and social injustice, but it won’t ignore it, either:

“I think we’ll do it our way…we all know the world we’re living in! So we’ve always tried to say, like, ‘In this world,’ or ‘In this climate’- so we’re definitely not writing this show in a world where corona doesn’t exist. But we’re also not necessarily making COVID- [or] corona-heavy storylines…dealing with what’s happening in the world is something we’re definitely gonna continue to discuss…”

When asked about possibilities of an “Insecure” spin-off, the showrunner asks fans who’d they like to learn more about:

“Maybe! Who do people wanna see in an ‘Insecure’ spinoff? What character?…I’m not saying they’re not interesting. I think they’re all super interesting. It’s just like, ‘What stories would you be telling?'”

Lastly, Prentice reveals what he thinks is the biggest misconception about “Insecure:”

“I think the biggest misconception is that, I think people think we go on Twitter and- you tweet something one week and you see it the next week, and people are like, ‘See! They did it!’ I’m like, ‘This show has been made!’ Like, we started writing this season back last April and May!”

See the full interview below!