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Issa Rae won’t run for president in real life, but she is willing to pretend for a role, and that’s precisely what she did for the Barbie movie and her President Barbie character.
Knowing that representation matters, the actress decided to grab inspiration from a few historical Black female figures. “We were thinking about some of the, I guess, presidential adjacent figures, and Michelle Obama was definitely one of them,” she told Teen Vogue.
According to the publication, Issa said the first Black first lady of the United States, informed how she played a president in the highly-anticipated live-action Barbie movie, directed and co-written by filmmaker Greta Gerwig.
She said Kamala Harris, the first Black female vice president, also helped with the role. “Kamala Harris was one of them,” she said. “I was thinking about the German leader [Angela Merkel], just [in] how people present — but then also the childhood version of what I thought a leader would be.”
“It was tapping into who six to eight-year-old me thought a female president would look like, and living in that world really informed how I played the president,” she revealed.
According to the star, she would never run for president. “No! Why would anybody want... I don’t get it. You’re blamed for everything. You can’t do anything right. You have no time. You’re constantly having to meet with people about serious things. No! No. I would be this president. I would be President of Barbie Land in a minute because it doesn’t need much work; it’s perfect. You’re just adding cherries on top of tasty sundaes,” she said.