Created by and starring Issa, Insecure followed Issa Dee, a woman about to turn 30 who’s trying to figure out life in LA. It ran from 2016 to 2021 and co-starred Amanda as Issa’s friend, Tiffany DuBois.
In the interview, Amanda said issues began in 2019 after she was allegedly denied entry by Issa’s publicist, Vanessa Anderson, to an Emmys party for Black performers.
Amanda claimed on the Club Shay Shay podcast that when she talked to Issa about the party a couple of days later, Issa recommended that she and Vanessa speak. Amanda claimed that, when she got spoke with Vanessa, the publicist admitted she didn’t “like” the actor. Amanda also accused Vanessa of launching a “smear campaign” against her after she hung up and refused to speak to Vanessa any further.
“There’s a whole narrative that is completely false that people keep spinning. They keep saying, you know, that I’m this mean girl on this set, that I harmed these people on set,” Amanda said. “I just want to point out something very basic. How can I be a mean girl on a set that ain’t my show? How?”
“It’s your show,” she continued, referring to Issa. “You are my boss. I don’t even have the capacity to be the mean girl here ’cause you can fire me. There’s no way for me to be a mean girl in this situation.”
Amanda said she’d tried to avoid talking about the experience publicly because it was always “incredibly important” to her to “protect” Issa. “Because I know that Issa is doing something within this business that so few people get to do. However, there’s just been enough instances at this point, where I should have been protected by Issa, and I wasn’t.”
“She wasn’t empowering to me. She didn’t feel like I was needed,” Amanda added. “She didn’t feel like I deserved to be protected. I’m only giving a portion of the situation. But that was my experience. And nonetheless, I have still always protected her because I felt like it was my responsibility to do so. But it is not.”
BuzzFeed has reached out to reps for Issa and Vanessa for comment on Amanda’s claims. In the meantime, watch the full episode here:
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