Amanda Seales: ‘I’m Expected To Make White People Uncomfortable’
On this week’s episode of “The Last Laugh,” Amanda Seales opens up about tensions among the “Insecure” cast, confronting Caitlyn Jenner, and her new book.
Amanda Seales already knows what the title of her next stand-up special is going to be: “I’m Not for Everyone.”
The comedian, best known for playing Tiffany DuBois on HBO’s Insecure, opened her first hour-long special for that network, titled I Be Knowin’, by calling out all of the people her comedy wasn’t for, a list that included “racists, rapists, sexists, misogynists, narcissists, folks that are calling the cops on blacks folks for just living our lives” and, of course, Trump voters.
The night before our interview for this week’s episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Seales had encountered a heckler who seemed to fit many of those descriptions during the International Myeloma Foundation’s annual comedy celebration at the Beverly Hilton hotel.
“Whenever I’m in those situations, I’m expected to make white people uncomfortable,” Seales tells me. “I’m the only black person on the bill. It was a bunch of straight white guys and Caroline Rhea, so I was just playing my role.”
At one point during her set, when Seales was making jokes about the difference between white women and women who “happen to be white,” an older gentleman in the audience yelled out, “I love white women!”
Seales reveals that she got a DM later in the night from a black woman who was sitting at his table. She wrote, “Thank you for being the voice in the room because oftentimes I am the only black person in the room and I don’t feel like I get to have that voice.” The woman said she knew the heckler was “racist” because when she sat down at the table, he asked her, “Are you here from a prison release program?”
When I respond with shock, Seales tells me, “White people, you don’t understand what other white people are saying to us!”
A self-described “truth-teller,” Seales imparts pearls of wisdom like this, acquired over an eclectic career that includes stints on Nickelodeon, MTV and Def Poetry (as her alter-ego Amanda Diva) in her new book Small Doses: Potent Truths for Everyday Use, which codifies on paper what she shares with listeners of her popular podcast—also called Small Doses—on a weekly basis.
Like with her stand-up, Seales’ target audience is fellow black women who are trying to make their way in a world primarily run by white men. “I know for me, I would have appreciated this type of book,” Seales says of her early days in show business, “because it would have given me a little more peace in the process.” As an artist, she spent so much time asking herself questions like, “Will people like this? How do I get people to like this? Am I enough?”
She may know she’s “not for everyone,” but she’s no longer willing to compromise.
Highlights from our conversation are below and you can listen to the whole thing right now by subscribing to The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, the Himalaya app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Article via TheDailyHypeBeast