Insecure Actress Amanda Seales opened up about her experience working on the critically acclaimed HBO comedy amid rumors that she was difficult to work with behind the scenes.
Speaking to former footballer Shannon Sharpe on his podcast Shay Shay ClubSeales shut down claims that she was a “mean girl” on the show and instead turned the tables on series creator and star Issa Rae, claiming that Rae didn’t “protect” her when the conflict arose behind scene.
“There is a whole narrative that is completely false and that people keep spinning around. They keep saying, you know, that I’m a bad girl on this set, that I hurt these people on this set,” Seales said. “I just want to point out something very basic. How can I be a bad girl on a set that’s not mine? As? It’s your program. You are my boss. I don’t even have the ability to be the mean girl here because you can fire me. There is no way I am a bad girl in this situation.”
The actress explained that much of the tension between her and Rae reached a breaking point when Rae’s publicist, Vanessa Anderson, had Seales kicked out of an Emmys party in 2019. Seales claimed she was banned from entering. party on two separate occasions that night and was later kicked out by security even after being personally escorted by one of the event organizers.
According to Seales, Rae came forward days later to maintain that she “had nothing to do with it.”
“I’ve never talked about this publicly because it’s always been incredibly important to me to protect Issa… I know her role is very important,” Seales explained. “And that’s why I have always protected Issa, however, there have been enough cases at this point where I should have been protected by Issa and I wasn’t… Now it’s a point where my protection of Issa has become towards me and people have been using it against me.”
Seales later said that she felt it was Rae’s responsibility to mediate the conflict between her and Anderson, but Rae allegedly did not intervene, even when Anderson waged what Seales described as a “smear campaign” against her. He also claimed that when they returned to the set after the incident, none of his co-stars mentioned it or showed any support.
“I’m looking at Issa because it’s like it’s his responsibility, we’re both his employees, this is part of leadership,” he said.
He Insecure The star also clearly disagreed with Sharpe’s point that Rae is “very empowering for women.”
“She didn’t give me power. She didn’t feel like I was necessary,” Seales said. “She didn’t feel like I deserved to be protected. I am only giving a part of the situation. But that was my experience. And yet, I have always protected her because I felt it was my responsibility to do so. But is not.”
