Many of us remember Hosea Chanchez for his role as the quarterback football player Malik Wright on the long-running CW/BET sitcom, The Game. He’s known as a fun-loving guy who is well-liked by the rest of his cast and fans alike.
Now the sitcome is coming back on air in a new 2021 reboot.
“Wendy Raquel Robinson I are the only two people that have done every single episode of the show from the inception to now,” Chanchez, 40, told The Post on the phone from Atlanta, where he’s currently filming the show. “It really is a full-circle moment for me in growth as an artist and as an actor.”
Now on Paramount+ (with new episodes out on Thursdays), “The Game” follows a large cast of characters in the world of professional football. Among others, there’s sports agent Tasha Mack (Robinson), her quarterback son Malik Wright (Chanchez), undrafted free agent Jamison Fields (Vaughn Hebron), and new character Colonel Ulysses S. Thatcher (Tim Daly).
With the success of the show, little did we know that Chanchez was fighting a battle in his mind that no one ever knew.
Hosea took to Instagram to speak about something that he had been trying to forget for decades: revealing to his followers that he was molested by his friend’s father when he was just 14-years-old! He admitted it was a hard topic for him to talk about and talked about intentionally forgetting about the matter to prevent himself from being judged.
In his post, he mentioned that his childhood friend’s father preyed on the fact that he came from a single mother home, and that his father was not in his life.
He also detailed how the predator would constantly ask him questions about his sexuality, not realizing it was to see his comfort level.
Hosea even revealed the predator’s real name! See all of the screenshots from the full story below:
“I think The Game has been established as a success” Chanchez tells Essence.com.
“We don’t have to prove that we’re bigger or funnier. We don’t have to prove anything. What we have to do now is show up and tell the story from a perspective that allows individuals to come into this world–fresh faces and old faces– and have something that is not only entertaining but grounded. Which is the turn the show has taken. It’s a more grounded show because the world we live in is more grounded considering everything we’ve experienced over the past two years. It’s a heaviness, a thickness, a girth, and that reflects in the world that we’ve created on Paramount+.”
