“Insecure” star Amanda Seales has spoken out about the longstanding, rumored tension between her and writer, producer and businesswoman Issa Rae.
She said Wednesday that Rae never felt she was “needed” on set for the HBO comedy series and never promoted her show “Get Your Life,” despite it being produced under Rae’s HOORAE Media.
Seales opened up about her current relationship with Rae on Shannon Sharpe’s podcast series “Club Shay Shay,” where the actress stated that her previous issues with Rae’s publicist Vanessa Anderson impacted how everyone treated Seales during filming for “Insecure.”
“Nobody’s saying nothing to me. Everybody knows, because at this time, it’s just the women shooting. Everybody knows what’s going on. They don’t say nothing to me. And that’s just f–king mean. It’s mean,” Seales said of her former costars.
TheWrap has reached out to Rae and Anderson for comment.
Despite Seales and Rae apparently having a one-on-one chat about the matter, Seales — who starred as Tiffany DuBois in the series — said Rae never empowered her and further felt that Seales 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,” she noted. “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,” Seales 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.”
She then detailed how Rae never promoted “Get Your Life.”
“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.”
The conversation about Rae came up as Seales was breaking down her tumultuous fallout with Anderson, who she said ran a “smear campaign” against her following a 2019 incident. Seales even alleged that Anderson instructed some of Rae’s entourage and security to tell her to leave an “Insecure” event. Ultimately, one of the last conversations Seales had with Rae involved her asking the producer to intervene.
“So 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,’” Seales recalled. “And she was like, ‘Well, then we just have a difference in opinion. This is between y’all.’”
“Insecure,” which Rae co-created with writer, actor and producer Larry Wilmore, aired ran for five seasons on HBO after its debut in 2016. The full cast included Rae, Seales, Yvonne Orji, Jay Ellis, Natasha Rothwell, Kendrick Sampson and more.
