USA News Hub

To say Amanda Seales has not been feeling the love from most Black media over the past month isn’t hyperbole, so it makes sense she would choose to do her first big post-pile-on tell-all with a non-journalist. If there’s anybody who wears that description like a well-made suit, it’s former-NFL star-turned pundit Shannon Sharpe.

But Rolling Out suggests Seales is likely rethinking that decision after Sharpe was problematic throughout the three-plus-hour “Nobody Cares About Black Women” “Club Shay Shay” podcast episode. The ex-athlete called his show Seales’ “safe space to say” her piece, but safety left the building early — in the first segment, where Seales revealed that she was recently diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder.

A diagnosis for something she has long suspected, she said, has helped her understand herself better. Sharpe responded, “Just because you have a special gift, that doesn’t mean that you have a spectrum. So you feel just because your brain functions differently that that’s what caused it or there’s a clinical diagnosis?”

Sharpe was equally dismissive when Seales recounted a racist experience she had as a child dancer on a Christmas show at Walt Disney World where hers was the only Black face. Seales said the other children bullied her, called her the N-word and implied she was an affirmative action hire.

“Yeah, they’re kids,” Sharpe said dismissively, before adding that children often repeat what they hear from their parents and their environment and “don’t know what they’re saying is wrong.” Then he asked Seales if she had been a model citizen as a child.

And after Seales shared difficulties in her relationship with Issa Rae, creator and star of “Insecure,” the long-running HBO series that also featured Seales, Sharpe countered that he heard her sets are “empowering.”

The episode sparked immediate backlash. According to the Los Angeles Times, Sharpe came under fire for the tense conversation. ClutchPoints recalled that he was criticized for his lack of a similar pushback on some of Katt Williams’ unsubstantiated claims on a popular episode earlier this year.

Of course, folks took to social media to voice their displeasure.

On X/Twitter, a post by @Isaiah_Jaay that read: “Shannon Sharpe … was not prepared for Amanda SEALES. He lowkey fought her on everything and she had a lot of patience because I was looking at the interview like HUH. I love Uncle Shay Shay but he gotta do better with not invalidating others experiences with his own because right now, it’s NOT about you lol.”

The criticism was no less sharp (see what we did there?) on Facebook.

“I’d say if she is problematic, Shay Shay is heads and tails above her in dumb problematics. Why do all these men get a pass?” wrote Yevette RJ.

“Sharpe was definitely antagonistic toward her at some points. He was awful. Full Stop,” wrote Ashanté M. Reese

“Shay Shay what are you doing? Why are you questioning and picking apart Amanda’s lived experiences with racism?” @kinkycurls_and_a_controller asked in Threads.

We’ll give some grace to the fact that Sharpe has never claimed to be a skilled interviewer — and boy was that ever obvious on this episode of his podcast. We tip our hat to Seales, though, who stayed on the hot seat for the entire three-hour grilling.

We were steamed and ready to sashay our way out of the club after 20 minutes, ’cause Sharpe definitely does not have the range.