The internet is divided after recent remarks from Issa Rae have once again brought the feud between her and Amanda Seales back into the spotlight. While Amanda has spoken out about the issues between them over the years, Issa has remained fairly tight-lipped about not only what went down, but how she’s felt about it, until this week when it came up at an event promoting her wine brand, Viarae.
It’s unclear why she chose this specific moment to finally address it, but she had a pretty bold response when she was asked who she wouldn’t work with again. A clip of her response at the event was played on The Breakfast Club. You can hear audio of Issa saying, “I mean, anyone who goes on a podcast and talks sh-t about me,” which prompted a huge reaction from the crowd.
Despite not saying her name explicitly, it was clear she was referring to Amanda, who, back in May, appeared on Club Shay Shay and went into detail about why the pair had fallen out in the first place, insisting that:
“I’ve never talked about this publicly, because it’s 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,” Amanda said during the interview. “However, there’s just been enough instances at this point where I should have been protected by Issa and I wasn’t.”
This is a pretty loaded claim to make, that you felt unprotected by Issa. Not necessarily a wrong one, because it is her experience, but a loaded one nonetheless, considering Issa’s reputation for elevating Black contributions in the entertainment industry. So let’s get into what exactly Amanda didn’t feel Issa protected her from.
Amanda has long claimed that Issa’s PR person, Vanessa Anderson, did not like her. She says that the entire cast of Insecure knew she wasn’t liked by Vanessa, but that no one spoke to her about it.
“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,” Amanda told Shannon. “And that’s just f-cking mean. It’s mean.”
But according to both Amanda and Issa, efforts to squash the beef were made. Amanda says she was the one who initially let Issa know she felt like Vanessa didn’t like her and was told by Issa that it was between her and Vanessa.
“I wanted two adults to have a conversation and mend the relationships. Two adults didn’t like each other, it didn’t work out and we got back to work,” Issa said at the Viarae event.
This is one of the reasons people have been so divided. Technically speaking, on the set of Insecure, Issa was Amanda’s boss. As this TikTok user puts it, Issa doesn’t “have the luxury of being neutral”. Many people agree that it was up to Issa to intervene and get the women back on track, if they were ever on track to begin with.
But from a professional standpoint, they did get back to work. Despite the tension, they were able to finish the show with no incidents, the kind that would spill onto camera, anyway. It’s a testament to the professionalism of everyone involved that they were still able to work together until the show wrapped two years later in 2021.
There is one incident that Amanda keeps coming back to, though, describing on multiple occasions what happened in 2019 at an Emmy’s afterparty, thrown by Vanessa, which is one of the more publicly-known incidents in the feud. First, she recalled the events leading up to her being kicked out of the party on her Instagram stories the day after it happened. Then, a few weeks later in October of 2019, she did a Small Doses podcast episode about being kicked out of the party, and her relationship with Vanessa. And since then, she’s gone on to speak about not only that experience, but feeling like an outcast in the industry at length on social media.
Prior to Issa recounting what happened back in 2019, people could only speculate as to why Issa nor the other Insecure stars did not intervene. But on stage at the Viarae event, Issa revealed she wasn’t even there and found out about the drama the morning after the event, when the rest of us did.
But the issue the internet is most divided over is whether Issa should have stepped in more when it came to Vanessa not liking Amanda. I think that’s what Amanda is referring to when she says she’s been “protecting” Issa. She feels that by not letting everyone know just how little Issa did about the matter, she was protecting her. So let’s take a look at the actions Issa took following her being made aware of how Amanda was feeling.
During her Club Shay Shay appearance, Amanda said she got a phone call from Issa upon returning from New York after the Image party. So right off the bat, we know that Issa was the one who reached out to Amanda about what had happened, despite not being there. She said she heard what happened and asked if Amanda and Vanessa could get on a call together, which they did. Immediately, Vanessa informed her that Issa had nothing to do with her being removed from the party, and that she was the person at fault. Amanda said Vanessa told her she had her removed because she did not like Amanda, which prompted Amanda to hang up the phone. Vanessa called back to ask if she wanted to know why she didn’t like her, and Amanda said it was none of her business why, adding in the podcast episode that Vanessa should speak to a therapist about that instead.
It takes so much discipline to not obsess over whether someone may or may not like you, let alone why. So in a way, it's admirable that Amanda can shut herself off like that. But in a professional working environment, that behaviour is kind of concerning.
Feedback is standard in a work environment, especially if you are in the middle of a two-sided issue, and judging by what else we’ve heard, multiple issues with multiple people. There cannot be resolution if one party’s tactic is to simply end the conversation. Whether it’s a yearly review with your manager or a colleague pulling you aside to let you know you could’ve used a more inclusive term in a meeting earlier that day, feedback is fundamental to any workplace, any relationship and any career thriving.
There has been so much talk about Amanda’s likability, because likeability, whether we like it or not, can impact opportunity, but especially the entertainment industry. So I understand how Amanda shutting down a conversation that in retrospect, she seemed to really be vying for has led her to being perceived negatively. But I also do agree that as her boss, Issa could have done more.
In trying to humanize them both, context is critical. And for Issa, part of that context is remembering that she is a creative and ended up in a managerial position by way of being an artist, not by having some childhood dream of being the person someone reports to.
Looking back at this incident five years later, it appears in her own synopsis that Amanda had opportunities to prevent the humiliation and harm she says she experienced from happening. The first would be to not attend a party you weren’t invited to, even as a plus one, particularly when you know that the person throwing the party is someone you don’t find to be a kind person, someone you know has issues with you. The second way would be to honour what the staff at the door says when they tell you that you can’t go inside. But in her own words, her thinking at the time was “They’re not gonna kick me out.” And the last would be to leave before security has to escort you out. Or at least when you see them approaching, or immediately after.
As I’ve written before, Amanda is a polarizing figure. And I think a part of that stems from the fact that she is constantly mirroring back to us the nuances of humanity, the nuances of us. We see and hear her moving through the world in real time as a Black woman, at times very effective at eliciting empathy, or sympathy at the very least. But at other times? She seems to facilitate her own downfall.
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