Comedian and 'Insecure' Star Amanda Seales Joins 'The Real: ' 'An Honor'

The Real has a new host at the table!

On Monday, Loni Love, Jeannie Mai, Tamera Mowry-Housley and Adrienne Houghton started off their first show of 2020 by announcing the identity of their permanent fifth co-host: Amanda Seales.

The 38-year-old comedian and star of HBO’s Insecure, whom Love called “the newest member of our family,” was showered with confetti as she proudly came out from backstage and joined the other women at the table.

“I’m tripping right now,” said an emotional Seales, who served as a guest co-host on the show several times in 2019.

“We get emotional at this table, and it’s okay. It’s okay,” said Mowry-Housely, 41, prompting Seales to recall the positive influence her temporary time on the show last year had on her.

“What was always so great when I would come and guest-host with y’all was, I remember at the end of the first two weeks I looked up and was like, ‘Wait, I was myself for the whole two weeks and I didn’t have to think about anything,’ ” she said.

“I said that before, but thinking about it more, it was just like we are in a business and in a town where you are being scrutinized so much, and it’s always like, ‘You gotta play the game.’ You know, it’s really just dope to come to a space where there was four women who I get along with on and off-screen, and we have different personalities and we have different points of view, but that’s the world, that’s what it is,” Seales continued.

“To be able to have the honor of bringing my voice into that means a lot to me,” she told the other women. “I have been at this a long time. I did not just show up/ I am not new to this y’all. So, to get to be here and have somewhere to sit everyday and be myself and talk to the world is an honor.”

The addition of Seales marks the first time The Real has had five permanent co-hosts since original host Tamar Braxton was fired in 2016. Following her exit, Braxton, 42, stopped speaking to the other co-hosts.

After exiting the Fox talk show, Braxton posted on Instagram at the time that she felt “backstabbed” and then unfollowed Love, which caused fans to believe drama with the co-hosts might have been the reason for Braxton’s departure.

In October 2018, The Real co-hosts addressed Braxton’s exit. Love, 47, revealed that she learned that the reality star’s ex-husband and manager at the time, Vincent Herbert — with whom she shares son Logan, 6 — was claiming on camera that her co-hosts were behind her firing.

“I called my attorney and I said, ‘You gotta call We TV and let them know if they’re naming us, we’re gonna have to have legal action,” Love, 47, told The Breakfast Club in 2018. “We had nothing to do with it. That’s defamation of character.”

We TV edited Herbert’s claims out of an episode of Braxton Family Values, but the relationship between Braxton and the other The Real co–hosts was seemingly never repaired.

But in June, Braxton apologized to her former co-hosts, as well as her famous sisters, in a since-deleted Instagram video that featured her song “Free Fallin” and a frank caption tat indicated a hope for forgiveness and change.

“When all u know and felt is hurt. You hurt. Self inflicted and to others are included,” Braxton wrote. “From my sisters, the ladies of the real, Iyanla, old and new Friends and whomever else I’ve EVER hurt, from being hurt. Please forgive me.”