“I still feel like I constantly have to prove myself,” Rae, 35, told Page Six. “I don’t feel like I’ve ‘made it,’ because the goalposts always move. From the outside looking in, it’s different.”

“This thing with the pandemic, production shutting down, executives having to make major decisions with black content that ends up not making the cut … I’m dealing with a lot of starting over and having to prove myself again,” she continued. “It’s levels to this and I might feel like I’m at the lower tier right now.”

The star’s new Netflix film with “Big Sick” star Kumail Nanjiani, “Lovebirds,” may help with that, though. For Rae, the opportunity to star alongside Nanjiani, 42, was an “aha” moment.

“It was like, ‘Oh s–t, we don’t get interracial couples that look like this,’” Rae explained. ” I mean, Kumail is Pakistani — I did think about ‘Mississippi Masala’ with Denzel Washington, but that’s the only black and Indian representation that I have seen in America on film, and that was like, almost 30 years ago, so it’s about time.”