Last December, actor and comedian Amanda Seales told her fans about an inappropriate conversation she said she had with former Def Jam honcho, Russell Simmons. In a new interview with Madame Noire, the Insecure star says after sharing her #MeToo moment, the backlash she received was “wild.”
In late 2017, Simmons came under fire by several women who accused the music mogul of everything from rape to sexual harassment. Because of her TV work and Def Poetry appearances, many wanted to know if Seales had ever experienced anything untoward from Simmons. While Seales said Simmons never touched her, during one meeting, she did say the businessman asked, “Uh, have we ever f–ked?”
Seales shared the story on Instagram and encouraged other women to come forward to share their experiences of harassment and mistreatment.
“No matter how seemingly benign or intrusive, no one wants to endure this, particularly in professional settings,” Seales wrote on Instagram last December. “Yet, so many of us have so many of these stories and we come to operate like a clandestine anti #creeplifes coalition of alerting others to ‘watch out for so and so.’ Let that be no more. It is not okay. It is not the culture. It is not your fault. Expose them.”
After sharing her story about Simmons, Seales said the backlash she received was “wild.”
“We as women for a long time have felt like we can’t really speak on things that really simply out of line. It’s so crazy how much wild sh-t people said to me after that,” Seales said.
“We live in such a twisted landscape of people where they really feel like these are things you should say to somebody,” she continued. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”