Jay Ellis, an American actor and author known for his role as Lawrence Walker on Issa
Rae’s HBO series “Insecure,” has begun his national book tour.
“Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me?)” is Jay’s debut publication, a nostalgia-inducing deep dive into Ellis’ childhood and the recollection of his imaginary friend, Mikey.
In anticipation of two L.A.-based events at The Grove and The Miracle Theater, the Sentinel held an exclusive interview to gain Jay’s perspective on the book, his book tour, and how sharing his childhood has propelled him toward his future goals.
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“I don’t think I realized [that I was writing a book],” Jay recalled. “I did a couple of posts on Instagram, and as I saw people responding about their imaginary friends or their kids’ imaginary friends, I kinda asked myself, ‘well, why do we have imaginary friends?’ and I started just writing the stories as best as I could remember them.”
The story centers around Jay’s invisible childhood companion, Mikey. When writing bits and pieces of his childhood with Mikey, he created four chapters and brought it to a book agent. “[The agent] immediately saw it and he was like, I’ve never seen these types of stories told in this type of way,” Jay explained.
Despite having no desire to write a book throughout most of his life, he found that writing is another method for him to do what he the loves the most: storytelling. “I just starting [writing] it. There were days when it came to me, and it flowed, and there were days when it was hard and I was discouraged and frustrated,” he said.
Writing the book proved to be both the cause of the creative block and the remedy: “I talk about basketball in the book a lot, and how much I learned from basketball. When I was in high school, my coach used to say, ‘it’s the days when you don’t want to do it that you make a breakthrough.’” The moments where he felt he was at a crossroads with the book were often the moments when another story, or even another chapter, was born.
Jay is looking forward to coming to Los Angeles and sharing his excitement with his supporters. On Thursday, Aug 8, Jay will be reading from and speaking on his book on the “Poured Over Podcast” at Barnes & Noble The Grove.
“I’ve listened to that podcast, I’m just super excited to be on it. This one’s just us in conversation with Q&A at the end.”
Juxtaposing his August 8 event with his second open event, August 13, at the Miracle Theater, Jay explained that he will be getting up on the Miracle’s stage and performing a 35-minute one-man show. Afterwards, special guest Issa Rae will host a Q&A.
“I’m really excited because I was such a fan of [Issa’s YouTube series] ‘Awkward Black Girl,’ and she’s an accomplished author in her own right. So, I’m interested in her perspective and her takeaways, and I know her questions are gonna be so wildly different than other people’s, because she knows me. She was one of the first people to get copy of the book!”
Of his future in writing and acting as a method of storytelling, Jay alludes to upcoming projects, including a show with Amazon and a possible screen adaption of his book.
“The response to this book has been amazing, people texting me or in my comments… it’s just fun seeing the response. I hope people keep connecting with it and find the fun that I found.”
Stay aligned with Jay Ellis on instagram @jayrellis, and attend one of his two book events in L.A.
