MadameNoire Featured Video

BET Awards 2020

Source: BET Awards 2020 / Getty

Recently comedians Godfrey and Amanda Seales met on Instagram Live to speak about our current cultural climate, the backlash from Dascha Polanco and John Leguizamo, and Godfrey’s support for Black women, and to promote her comedy game show, Smart, Funny and Black.

The conversation took quite a few twists and turns. But in the midst of the conversation, Seales spoke about her love for street dudes,  their short attempt at possibly, maybe dating one another, Nick Cannon and Terry Crews and she shared more detail about her reasons for leaving “The Real.”

“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 and to me as a person. And then on top of that, I didn’t want to be somewhere where I felt like people weren’t being honest with me, where people felt scared of me because of my Black womanness.

I did a Smart, Funny, and Black game on “The Real.” And I was so excited to get to play a Smart, Funny, and Black game on “The Real.” And they assigned it to the one white woman producer. But we have three Black women producers and one Black guy producer. So, I was like, ‘Why are you producing this?’ And she said, ‘Oh because 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.’ Now, she could have said, ‘Well, actually I grew up in this culture, if that was the case.’

But I said to her, ‘Do you even know what we’re going to be talking about?’ And she said, ‘No, I just figured you were going to talk about it and I would just write it down.’ So I said, ‘Am I going to get a producer credit?’ Because to me, you assign the different segments to people who are going to be able to produce it to the best ability. And it’s like if we were doing a segment on the Sabbath dinner, she was the one Jewish person on staff, she should be in charge of that segment because she has the most expertise on that.

So basically, she went crying to somebody saying that I attacked her. Even though I spoke to her literally in this tone of voice.

There was another producer who stepped in and said, ‘Listen, we gon work on it.’ And she proved my point because I’m new to this show. I need to work with somebody who knows the show. I know my show, Smart, Funny and Black and you’re going to help us put this together. And so, I couldn’t stay in a place like that.

Also, these trolls used to come for me beyond comprehension. And they used to come for me on The Real’s page. And that was the part that was too much for me. It was my space of work and people are coming for me crazy and they’re not stopping it.

Loni would like, a couple times on the show be like, ‘Leave Amanda alone!’”

You can listen to the full conversation Amanda shared with fellow comedian Godfrey as well as the portion about “The Real” in the videos below.

Comment Disclaimer: Comments that contain profane or derogatory language, video links or exceed 200 words will require approval by a moderator before appearing in the comment section. XOXO-MN