Thursday, March 28, 2024

Amanda Seales Says Co-Hosting ‘The Real’ Was ‘Betrayal to My People’

Amanda Seales - the real welcome

*Amanda Seales is speaking out once again about her decision to leave “The Real.”

The actress/comedian previously blamed poor, white leadership behind the scenes for her decision to walk away from the daytime talk show. 

“Our topics are being picked by someone who doesn’t. Our chat is produced by a White man—who even if he has the best of intentions, he has a disconnect from his experience in the world from what we’re going to be addressing,” Seales explained during an interview with Jason Lee of Hollywood Unlocked.  

“And then we have executives all the way up who are all White women. They have the best of intentions for their company and for their network but not necessarily for the culture. How could they? They’re not connected to this,” she added. 

Over the weekend she dished with comedian Godfrey on Instagram Live, and noted that being on the show felt like a “betrayal to my people.”

“I left The Real because it was breaking my spirit … I was being asked to not talk about certain things that felt like a betrayal to my people,” she said in the video, PEOPLE reports.

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“And then on top of that, I didn’t want to be somewhere that I felt like people weren’t being honest with me and where people felt scared of me because of my Black woman-ess.”

Seales went on to share one example of the white supremacist protocol of the show, when a white female producer was assigned to assist her on a Smart, Funny and Black segment.

The “Insecure” star created the Smart, Funny and Black game to test one’s knowledge of Black popular culture. 

“I did a Smart, Funny and Black game on The Real and I was so excited to get to play my Smart, Funny and Black game on The Real,” Seales said, before adding, “They assigned it to the one white woman producer, but we have three Black women producers and one Black guy producer and I was like ‘Why are you producing this?’ and she was like, ‘So and so assigned it to me,’ and I said, ‘But why would you be producing this? You’re a white woman. You don’t understand what we’re going to be talking about.’ “

She continued,  “It’s like if we were doing a segment on the Sabbath dinner, [and] she was the one Jewish person on staff, she would be in charge of that segment because she has the most expertise on that,” Seales explained.

The incident ended with the white producer “crying to someone and said I attacked her,” said Seales.

“I couldn’t stay in a place like that,” she added. 

Seales announced her decision to depart the show in June. 

“It doesn’t feel good to my soul to be at a place where I can not speak to my people the way they need to be spoken to,” she explained. “And where the people that are speaking to me in despairing ways are not being handled.”

Continuing: “I’m not at a space where, as a full Black woman, I can have my voice and my co-workers also have their voices, and where the people at the top are not respecting the necessity for Black voices to be at the top, too.”

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