IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Some Friendships Need to Go with Issa Rae
Wed, 12 Mar 2025
Issa Rae is an acclaimed actor, producer, writer, and restauranteur—but she’s also a student of modern adult friendships. She joins Michelle and Craig to answer a question from a listener who is struggling with the unexpected end of a long-term friendship. Issa asks why male friendships are so weird and shares lessons from a friendship falling out. Michelle offers lessons on how to maintain connections throughout life, and Craig takes a stand for the fellas – who, Issa and Michelle claim, have no idea how to use emojis to express actual emotion. Have a question you want answered? Write to us at imopod.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Why are adult friendships so complicated?
Like the crisis would require an emergency session.
Oh, my God.
Like somebody's on a train.
Yeah, flying.
You know, there's movement.
And you're not going to deal with a crisis.
Yeah, I was like, we're coming. We're coming. It's a crisis. My friend's dog died.
We were all... There at the house, bringing her favorite snack. Like, this is, took off work.
That is a script. That is something that you could write on television.
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Chapter 2: How do Michelle and Craig's friendship experiences differ?
There's always something to dig into.
Because we talk about everything. And there's... There's just... There are things that you don't know affect you until you talk about it. It could be nothing. It could be talking about a TV show episode that then leads to like, oh, this happened to me and this is how I was affected by it. And there's just... And nothing is off limits and that's the beauty of it is just...
You get to explore everything freely with no judgment. And that's also the devastation of, oh, I don't have this safe space anymore. You are the safe space. And I didn't even see that it was a malicious space. Which, you know, getting back to this letter, it's like this woman seemed like she was pouring her heart out to this woman. to Eva. And it was like hit or miss. I'm not even sure.
I don't even know if I like you, girl. Oh, I guess I do like you, but it's too late. And so I think that that's, that's also a violation of just like, am I in your life or not? Do you like me or not? Are we, are we good or not? And now someone, something happened that's tragic. And I, I think
You're one of the last people I heard from, so maybe I need to be real about what this friendship actually was.
Yeah, and I think Eva's asking, am I a bad friend, right? I mean, I think this situation is worth giving her some pause, you know, with maybe the other friends she is close with in real time. Yeah. If she does have those, and, you know, and this is what women do. Like, this would have happened to me in one friendship, and I would have gone to a set of friends to say, hey—
Hey, this is what happened to me. Am I messing up here? Am I wrong? Right. And the crew would be they would dissect it. They would be IMO in real time, you know. And I think, you know, with what I know, what we understand from this letter, I would tell Eva, yeah, girl, you do need to think a little bit, you know.
Think a little bit because it, you know, for somebody to go through something tragic and then in their letter with, I think this friendship is over because it's not giving me enough in this particular situation, she probably would check herself to say, you're right. I wasn't fully in this. I was ambivalent and I thought it was okay for me to be ambivalent here.
because it didn't mean the same thing to Eva as it did to her friend.
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