Former “Insecure” actress Amanda Seales discussed her feelings toward Issa Rae and the publicist responsible for Seales being denied entry to a Hollywood party.
Seales explained that she was personally invited to an Emmy party by “Grey’s Anatomy” actor Jesse Williams during her new interview on “Club Shay Shay.” The event was called “Celebrate the Culture II,” an Emmy’s afterparty for the Black community planned by Rae’s publicist, Vanessa Anderson, and others.
” … I am literally being told, ‘You cannot get entrance into a party that Jesse Williams invited me to.’ That is the only Black event for the Emmy weekend because a white woman is telling me I can’t get in. But I’m fine,” she said while on Instagram Live. “This is security escorting me out of the Black Emmy party, that’s what’s happening.”
Seales told host Shannon Sharpe that she was invited to the after-party by Williams via text, but Anderson wouldn’t let her in. When Sharpe asked what she did to not be invited inside, she said, “I arrived … Here’s how it went.”
She went on to describe most white Hollywood parties as boring but recalled the great time she attended the first Black Emmys after-party in 2018 with Jill Scott.
Seales also noted that she told Rae at the time that Anderson “had a problem” with her, but Rae replied, “That’s between y’all. That’s none of my business.”
The “Smart, Funny & Black” stand-up comic claims she was unaware of what she did to annoy Anderson, but she heard the publicist say, “Oh, come on, Amanda,” when she had only been standing next to Scott and hadn’t done anything.
So when she attended the 2019 party with fellow “Insecure” actor Kendrick Sampson and her friend Katheia, she was told she couldn’t go inside by Anderson.
“She tells us, ‘You can go in, you can go in,’… and she says, ‘No you can’t go in. I said, ‘Why can’t I go in?’ She says, ‘You’re just on the list of not being able to go in.'”
Seales added that Sampson went inside to find out what happened and she decided to leave the party before Joey Harris, a consultant of Janet Jackson’s, took her back to the door and inquired why she wasn’t being let in.
The 42-year-old said that Harris also went inside to find out, she tried to leave again before running into singer Elijah Kelly, who also wanted her to stay at the party. As one of the organizers of the party, Kelly tried to bring her in, but Anderson grabbed her arm before Seales shook her hand away.
The comedienne said she went to the bar, but Anderson soon had security throw her out. “A security guard your size approaches me,” she said to 6-foot-2 Sharpe. “And says, ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave.'”
Seales added that it was Anderson who’d told security that she needed to leave, and sent two other security guards to escort her out. She said she felt “humiliated” that nobody from the show came to help her out.
The actress noted that Rae called her after the party to say she’d heard what happened but had nothing to do with it. Seales then revealed that she’s never felt protected by Rae, noting that her time on the HBO comedy “Insecure” was not easy.
Awkward Black Girl, Issa Rae debuted her new project: 'Get Your Life', a web series starring Amanda Seales. pic.twitter.com/8ibAgab78H
— BLEEK = 'Black-Geek' (@BleekLondon) November 1, 2015
The trouble first started after a show created by Seales, the 2015 comedy series “Get Your Life,” was promoted on Rae’s YouTube, and the media thought it was her show. Seales said she asked Rae to post a tweet correcting the assumption, but the “Insecure” star refused to do so. Seales said she protected Rae at the time because the actress was breaking barriers in the entertainment industry.
“So, I’ve never talked about this publicly because it has always been incredibly important to me to protect Issa,” said Seales. “Because I know that Issa is doing something within this business that so few people get to do. … But I know that her role is very important, and so I’ve always protected Issa.”
“So, 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. “And one of my biggest problems that we have discussed several times in this interview is that I think people are going to show up for me the way I show up for them. And now it’s at a point where my protecting of Issa has become turned on to me and something that people are using against me.”
“There’s a whole narrative that is completely false that people keep spinning,” she continued. “They keep saying that I’m this mean girl on this set. That I harmed these people on this set. … How can I be a mean girl on 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, ’cause you can fire me.”
Seales added that after Rae’s phone call, she agreed to speak to Anderson, but the phone call didn’t go well after Anderson admitted she kicked Seales out of the party because she didn’t “like” her. Seales said she hung up on Anderson, and Rae called her again to ask if they would have an issue on the show’s set while her publicist began a smear campaign against her.
“I said, ‘You know, listen, I am not saying that it’s going to be a problem on set. But I do think it is a problem that you don’t feel that you need to step in,'” replied Seales.
The actress added that she was ignored on the set of “Insecure” afterward where “nobody is saying nothing to me.”
“Everybody knows what’s going and they don’t say nothing to me and that’s just f—king mean. It’s mean!” Seales insisted. ‘They don’t say nothing to me. And let me tell you from the beginning I have been trying with these ladies, because I want to make community everywhere that I go.”
“I done invited them to my house. They didn’t come. I bought them gifts.They say ‘thanks.’ I tried to plan a retreat. They said, ‘We don’t want to go.’”
Seales said not liking someone shouldn’t be a sufficient reason to have security throw them out of a party. But she believes Rae should have spoken up on her behalf and stopped the publicist from bad-mouthing the actress in the industry.
