So, Are We Getting a Male Version of Insecure?

When Issa Rae’s Insecure premiered on HBO, it gave Black women something television had rarely given us: room to be complicated.

Issa, Molly, Lawrence, Kelli, Tiffany, and the rest of the Insecure universe were never reduced to one storyline. They were figuring out friendship, careers, love, money, identity, and adulthood, often making questionable decisions along the way. Sometimes they were right. Sometimes they were dead wrong. Sometimes they were simply trying to figure it out.

Now, Rae is returning to HBO with an untitled male friendship comedy set in the Las Vegas boxing world. And while the immediate comparison will inevitably be “a male version of Insecure,” I’m actually hoping it becomes something a little more nuanced.

Rae will write and executive produce the series, with her longtime Insecure collaborator Prentice Penny serving as showrunner, executive producer, and director of the pilot. The half-hour comedy follows Menzel, a 30-year-old barber hoping to break into sports management, and JB, his best friend and an up-and-coming boxer. As JB’s career begins to take off, the two find their friendship tested by ambition, money, insecurity, and the growing pains that come with success.

That combination has me paying attention.

Because if there is one thing I hope this show does, it’s give us an honest look at what Black men are actually dealing with beneath the surface. Not the polished, hyper-masculine version of manhood we’re so used to seeing, and definitely not another show where every male frustration somehow circles back to women.

I mean the real issues that often get buried underneath the expectation that men should simply “handle it.”

The pressure to have your life figured out by a certain age. The fear of falling behind. The difficulty of admitting when you’re lonely, insecure, or struggling. The ways pride can interfere with asking for help. The emotional consequences of choices that men may have been taught to suppress rather than confront.

And yes, accountability.

If this show is going to explore the issues men face, I hope it doesn’t stop at making them feel seen. I hope it makes them look at themselves, too.

Men can have legitimate frustrations with dating, relationships, friendships, career pressure, and expectations around masculinity without women being responsible for every problem they experience. There is room to acknowledge men’s struggles while also asking what they could be doing differently.

Empathy and accountability can exist in the same conversation.

Imagine watching a character recognize that he keeps sabotaging relationships because vulnerability makes him uncomfortable. Or seeing a man realize that his resentment toward his friend has less to do with his friend’s success and more to do with how he feels about his own life. Imagine watching men actually have the uncomfortable conversations they would rather avoid, then having to live with what happens when they don’t.

Those moments don’t need to come wrapped in a lecture. That’s the beauty of television. Sometimes the most effective way to start a conversation is to let people see themselves in it first.

That’s also why I’m interested in the friendship at the center of this story.

Male friendship is often portrayed through jokes, competition, drinking, sports, or the occasional “brotherhood” speech. There’s nothing wrong with those things, but there is so much more happening underneath them. What does it look like when two men love each other as friends but don’t know how to communicate when things get difficult? Can they tell each other the truth without turning every disagreement into a battle? Can they celebrate each other’s wins without allowing comparison to consume the friendship?

Black men deserve stories that are willing to sit in that discomfort. They deserve to be vulnerable without being emasculated, flawed without being demonized, and accountable without being written off. They deserve to be seen as whole people who are still figuring life out.

And maybe that’s where the Insecure comparison becomes useful.

We already know what Rae and Penny can do when they’re given room to tell stories about people figuring life out. Insecure made everyday struggles feel funny, specific, and real, which is exactly why I’m interested in seeing them bring that same approach to Black male friendship.

I don't think the goal needs to be making every man feel validated, either. Sometimes the character we relate to most should also be the person who makes us say, “Yeah, brother, you need to work on that.”

Because giving Black men room to be complicated doesn’t mean giving them a pass. It means allowing them to be fully human, even when that humanity is messy, uncomfortable, and occasionally hard to defend.

And if Rae and Penny can bring that kind of emotional honesty to this series, HBO might give us something far more interesting than a male counterpart to a beloved show. We might get a story about Black men that lets them laugh, love, screw up, confront themselves, and grow without reducing them to any one of those things.

Maybe, in the process, we get to see Black men the way they deserve to be seen: fully human, worthy of love, worthy of being chosen and worthy of having their stories told with care.