Insecure actress Amanda Seales responded to claims she is difficult to work with and shed light on rumors that her working relationship with show creator and star Issa Rae was strained. As part of the latest episode of former footballer Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay podcast, Seales took time to respond to allegations that she was a “mean girl” on the Emmy-nominated series. In her view, Rae was to blame for not “protecting” her when disputes occurred behind the scenes.
“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 said, per Decider. “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?” she continued. “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. There’s no way for me to be a mean girl in this situation.”
“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,” Seales added. Despite this, Seales said Rae never protected her in return while she played Tiffany DuBois on Insecure from 2016 to 2021.
She mentioned in particular that she was allegedly removed from a Black Emmys party in 2018 due to Rae’s publicist, Vanessa Anderson. On two occasions, the actress was barred from entering the party, and then security later kicked her out.
Following the event, Seales said Rae contacted her. “She called me and said, ‘Hey, I heard what happened this weekend. I just want you to know I have nothing to do with it,'” she said, requesting that Rae discuss the situation with Anderson.
The circumstances did not change, according to Seales, who claimed Anderson started a smear campaign against her in the media in the assertion that she had engaged in an altercation at the Emmys event. “I’ve always protected Issa, however, there’s just been enough instances at this point where I should have been protected by Issa and I wasn’t,” Seales explained. “Now it’s at a point where my protecting of Issa has been turned onto me and people have been using it against me.”
She added, “I’m looking at Issa because it’s like it is your responsibility. We are both your employees, this is a part of leadership.” In response to Sharpe’s comment about Rae being “very empowering to women,” Seales replied, “She wasn’t empowering to me. She didn’t feel like I was 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. And nonetheless, I have still always protected her because I felt like it was my responsibility to do so. But it is not.”