Speaking her truth. Amanda Seales made the decision to leave The Real after just six months because she didn’t feel that she could be authentic as a cohost.
The Insecure star, 39, opened up about her exit from the daytime talk show in an Instagram Live conversation with The Neighborhood Talk 2 on Saturday, August 1.
“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,” Seales explained. “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.”
The My Brother and Me alum recalled an incident on set when a white female producer was assigned to help her put together a Smart, Funny and Black segment on The Real. The game — which was created by Seales — tested players’ knowledge on Black pop culture.
“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?’” Seales said. “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 added, “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.”
The former talk show host claimed that the producer became upset when Seales brought up the matter and “went crying to someone and said I attacked her.” The actress explained that she “couldn’t stay in a place like that.”
Seales also said that she received backlash from “trolls” on social media during her time on the show. “These trolls used to come for me beyond comprehension and on The Real’s page,” she said, adding that her cohost Loni Love would tell the fans to “leave Amanda alone.”
The singer joined The Real in January alongside cohosts Love, 49, Jeannie Mai, Adrienne Bailon and Tamera Mowry, who announced her own exit from the show in July.
Seales revealed in June via Instagram Live that she chose not to renew her contract with the Daytime Emmy winning show.
“My contract is up at The Real, and I didn’t renew it,” she said at the time. “It doesn’t feel good to my soul to be at a place where I cannot speak to my people the way they need to be spoken to, and where the people that are speaking to me in despairing ways are not being handled.”
Seales continued: “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.”
