Amanda Seales Breaks Silence On Her Relationship With Issa Rae
Amanda Seales is revealing the details of her relationship with Issa Rae.
During an appearance on Shannon Sharpe’s podcast “Club Shay Shay,” Seales spoke about her current status with the Insecure creator.
Seales shared that the aftermath of her infamous incident with Vanessa Anderson, Rae’s publicist, where she was denied entry at a Black Hollywood Emmys after-party, changed how she was treated during filming for Insecure.
“Nobody’s saying nothing to me. Everybody knows because, at this time, it’s just the women shooting,” said Seales, who played Tiffany Dubois on the hit show. “Everybody knows what’s going on. They don’t say nothing to me. And that’s just f**king mean. It’s mean.”
Although Seales and Rae discussed the incident, Seales was left feeling that she wasn’t “needed.”
“She didn’t feel like I deserved to be protected. I’m only giving a portion of the situation. But that was my experience,” Seales said. “And nonetheless, I have still always protected her because I felt like it was my responsibility to do so. But it is not.”
“I’ve never talked about this publicly because it has always been incredibly important to me to protect Issa because I know that Issa is doing something within this business that so few people get to do. And it’s not something I desire to do,” she continued. “I’m not interested in getting a $100 million production deal. That’s not a life that I want for myself. But I know that her role is very important.”
As the interview went on, Seales also claimed that Rae wouldn’t promote her scripted comedy series Get Your Life although it was produced by Rae’s HOORAE Media.
“Like, I put all my money into it, I wrote it, I starred in it, et cetera. And so I said, ‘Hey, you know, would you mind tweeting to correct this?’ And she just wouldn’t,” Seales said. “She wouldn’t promote any of the shows, you know? And I just felt like that was unfortunate. But it didn’t make me, it didn’t change my view of her character.”
Seales addressed speculation that she earned a reputation as a “mean girl” during the filming of the show.
"There's a whole narrative that is completely false that people keep spinning. They keep saying, you know, that I'm this mean girl on this set, that I harmed these people on this set," Seales told the show's host, Shannon Sharpe.
"I just want to point out something very basic. How can I be a mean girl on a set that ain't my set? How? It's your show. You are my boss. I don't even have the capacity to be the mean girl here because you can fire me," she continued. "There's no way for me to be a mean girl in this situation."