'Insecure' Star Jay Ellis Reveals The Advice He'd Give His Character Lawrence

Season 2 of Insecure has come and gone and it was quite a roller coaster ride of emotions for the fans. 

Perhaps the character who goes through the most ups and downs is Issa’s beloved ex Lawrence Walke, played by actor Jay Ellis.

The fictional couple’s five-year relationship came to an end during the first season’s finale prompting him to start a situationship with Tasha only to be called a f*ckboy in its demise. He got his dream app “Woot Woot” shut down, had a close encounter with a police officer and we can’t forget that God-awful festishizing threesome. 

The man who brings Lawrence to life, Jay Ellis, spoke candidly with Cosmopolitan about what his character and the women on the series have taught him. 

“Being on a show that is created by a woman, and our writers’ room is predominantly made up of women — we work with a lot of woman directors, and our DP, our camera crew — you see relationships and sex from a completely different perspective,” the 35-year-old revealed. “You start to see that you may not care about [something] but to a woman you’re in a relationship with or sleeping with, it could mean a completely different thing. I think a lot of what Molly went through in her first season and dating [proves that]. She was looking for something those guys weren’t looking for, and something those guys may have said maybe kind of led her to believe that they were a little more serious [than they were]. I think that there’s just these signals sometimes that we don’t necessarily catch. And being fortunate enough to work with so many women, I get to see so much of that now. Even sexual positions mean something different to men and women, and that’s really interesting.”

In the second season finale, the actor says that his character learns a valuable lesson simply by communicating and that is exactly the advice he would give him if he could. 

“Talk. I think the biggest thing is just being able to use your words and have a conversation and not feel afraid to be vulnerable and open up. Whether it’s picking up the phone and calling Issa or whether it’s picking up the phone and calling one of his friends. Lawrence needs to get out of his head and actually start talking through things with somebody. With multiple people, if possible. He doesn’t have to go through it alone. And he doesn’t have to beat himself up about it. I think our life is a journey and we make mistakes, and it’s how we learn from those mistakes and rebound from those mistakes that sets us on the path that we’re meant to be on.”

We’ll have to wait and see what happens with Lawrence and Issa in season 3 when it returns to HBO in 2018.