Actress-producer and writer Issa Rae is getting animated.
The 36-year-old has been tapped to join the voice cast of Sony Picture Animation’s sequel to “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” The Hollywood Reporter recently revealed. THR reports the “Insecure” star will be voicing the character Jessica Drew, the alter ego of Spider-Woman.
Details regarding the film’s plot have yet to be made public. Still, the outlet reported that Shameik Moore, who voices Miles Morales, who is an alternative-dimension Spider-Man, and Hailee Steinfeld, who plays Spider-Gwen in the original Oscar-winning movie, will both be reprising their roles.
This is the first voice role for Rae, who expressed pure excitement over her latest endeavor via her Instagram Story, sharing a screengrab of the Hollywood Reporter article announcing the news. “The way I have loved Spider-Man since the third grade,” the NAACP Image Award winner wrote. “A dream come true.”
Fans appear to be just as excited for the star and took to their social media platform to voice their thoughts on the new role. One person shared a meme with the caption, “A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.”
Another user commented, “HELL YES, I’M HERE FOR ISSA, THIS FILM IS GONNA BE AWESOME. ALSO ANYONE WHO IS COMPLAINING ABOUT THE CASTING, I POLITELY ASK YOU TO SCREW OFF.”
“Didn’t even know I needed this, but now it’s everything I ever wanted,” expressed a third. “To me, that’s cinema,” wrote a fourth.
Of course, some voiced concerns over a Black woman playing a white fictional character, much like the outcry that took place when R&B songstress Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel in the live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid.” One Twitter user who wrote, “I think there’s a rule now that minority characters such as Black or Asian can’t be voiced by white actors.” They added, “It’s only fair that the same rule is applied to white characters.”
Although no such rule exists, white voice actors in recent years have made a personal choice to step down from voicing Black characters. Still, Black Twitter was quick to shut down any perceived racist reaction, including one user who pointed out that Spider-Woman was Black and rocked a visibly healthy Afro at one point in Marvel’s history. P
“So some of y’all mad they made Spider Woman back into a Black Woman?” he wrote alongside panels from the 1975 Marvel comic book Spidey Super Stories No. 11, when the Black Spider-Woman character Valerie the librarian was introduced in what became her sole appearance in the series.
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” is slated to release in theaters on Oct. 7, 2022. The film will be directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson. Phil Lord and Chris Miller return to produce and write, with Amy Pascal, Avi Arad, and Christina Steinberg as producers, and Alonzo Ruvalcaba as a co-producer.
