Insecure star Amanda Seales says she’s ready to “shift out” of the industry after what she perceives to be continual shunning from Black Hollywood.
On Sunday, the actress and comedian took to Instagram to vent to her 2.2 million followers. “I just wanna say something. If it wasn’t for y’all, I would really think that I ain’t doin’ shit,” she said in a candid video. “Because the industry I’m in does not recognize me.
“And to be clear,” she continued, “I’m speaking about the Black spaces in the industry I’m in, ’cause y’all know I don’t give two damns about any of these other spaces.”
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Seales—who’s known for her role as Tiffany on Issa Rae’s Insecure, along with her HBO comedy special I Be Knowin’—went on to say that despite hosting and participating in some of Hollywood’s prime spaces for Black talent, she’s been continuously shut out. For instance, despite being nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 2022 for her role on Insecure, Seales says she has never been invited to the awards show.
“I don’t get invited to Essence Women in Hollywood. I’ve never been invited to the NAACP Image Awards. ... Never been honored at Black Girls Rock,” she said. “I’ve hosted these events. I literally hosted the BET Awards in 2020 in my house, and I was not invited to the BET Awards since.” (BET did not immediately return The Daily Beast’s request for comment.)
This isn’t the first time Seales has accused Black Hollywood of excluding her. In 2019, she said on Instagram that she’d been kicked out of an Emmy Awards party by a publicist who worked for Rae. “For the record, I am being denied entrance to the Black people’s Emmy party,” she said in an Instagram Story, according to Black Enterprise.
“I just want to put this on record that I am literally being told, ‘You cannot get entrance into a party that Jesse Williams invited me to,’” she said at the time. “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.”
Seales recalled the incident again in a 2021 episode of the Jemele Hill Is Unbothered podcast: “It was a final straw, and if you’re in this town, it’s a very small town. Black Hollywood is a very small enclave of people, and so it was like a moment in time where I just realized, like what I had imagined I was walking into was actually the opposite. And that was a very jarring thing for me to kind of really grasp.”
Years later, Seales is still expressing the same sentiment.
“I’ve realized I need to shift out of this industry,” she said in her Instagram video on Sunday, before going on to thank her fans for their support. “I just want to thank y’all for always reminding me that I really am valuable because the game and the industry that I’ve been in has never let me know.”
