Amanda Seales says she left The Real as it ‘felt like a betrayal to my people’

Actor and comedian served as co-host on talk show from January to June 2020

Comedian Amanda Seales has revealed that she left The Real because it “felt like a betrayal to my people”.

The actress, who stars as Tiffany DuBois on the comedy series Insecure, joined the talk show as a permanent co-host in January this year, but left just six months later.

Appearing on Instagram Live with comedian Godfrey, Seales said: “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 as a person.

“I didn’t want to be somewhere that I felt like people weren’t being honest with me, where people felt scared of me because of my black woman-ness.”

Seales described one incident that occurred when she was turning her Smart, Funny and Black comedy show into a segment for the TV series, only to be given a white producer to work with.

“We have three black women producers and one black guy producer,” she explained. “I was like ‘Why are you producing this?’ and she was like, ‘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’... I couldn’t stay in a place like that.”

The Independent has approached Warner Bros for comment.

The Real first aired in 2013 and is currently presented by Adrienne Bailon, Loni Love and Jeannie Mai.