By Nick A. Zaino III Globe correspondent,Updated September 9, 2021
Some entertainers are multi-hyphenates. Call Amanda Seales a multi-multi-hyphenate. She is a comedian, actor, podcast host, activist, musician, painter, and author, and she holds a masters in African-American Studies from Columbia University. She laughs when this list is read to her.
“You missed DJ,” she says over the phone. “But all of that is accurate. So good job!”
Trying to juggle all of that might seem overwhelming. But not to Seales. She has what she calls a “skeleton key” that unlocks all her other talents: comedy. In 2013, she found herself in the midst of a major transition. She had decided to leave the music industry, which she found to be unscrupulous, even after finding success as a singer and rapper working with Floetry and The Roots. But she wasn’t sure what to do next.
When she thought about people who had the kind of careers and creative life she wanted, Chris Rock, Chelsea Handler, and Ellen DeGeneres came to mind. What they all had in common was that they worked in multiple mediums, and everything they did was based on their point of view. “I wanted that for myself,” says Seales. “Because I’m a very opinionated person. I’m a thinker. And it’s one of those things that I kind of never run out of. So if you’re going to build a career on something, do it on something that you seem to never run out of.”
For the full story, click the link below: