Even more than a decade later, there’s still fallout from the contentious awards campaign for 2009’s Precious, which earned Mo’Nique a best-supporting-actress Oscar.
Shortly after reaching that career peak, the now 55-year-old comedian largely retreated from Hollywood. She’s made just a handful of projects in the ensuing years, including her upcoming Netflix comedy special, My Name Is Mo’Nique—which came to fruition after Mo’Nique sued the streamer in 2019 for failing to negotiate in good faith on a 2017 stand-up venture. The suit was settled out of court in June 2022.
“I felt the same injustices and inequalities that all the Black women who came to Hollywood before me felt. Oftentimes people call that anger. They call it bitterness. They call it unstable,” Mo’Nique told The Hollywood Reporter in a new profile. “They give it all these titles except what it really is.”
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According to Mo’Nique, her troubles with the Precious awards campaign began when she refused to promote the film at the Cannes Film Festival for free, against the advisement of director Lee Daniels and producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey. “I said, ‘Oprah, I’m doing a talk show. I’m doing a comedy tour. I have a husband and I have babies. I have a little bit of downtime and I’m going to take advantage of it. So I’m not going anywhere because I’m not obligated to go anywhere. I’ve done my part,’” Mo’Nique recalled. “So we mutually agreed to disagree. That was it. Next thing I know, I am considered ‘difficult’ and ‘hard to work with.’”
When she won the Academy Award months later, Mo’Nique declined to thank Daniels during her acceptance speech, leading to a 13-year feud—during which the actor alleged he had “blackballed” her from the industry.
According to Daniels, who also directed Mo’Nique in 2005’s Shadowboxer, he envisioned the actor taking major roles in several of his projects during their estrangement—including parts eventually played by Winfrey (in 2013’s The Butler) and Taraji P. Henson (in the 2015 Fox hit Empire). “But I didn’t have the power to hire her,” Daniels told THR. “There were studios and other producers involved.” The two have now reconciled, though, and are working together once more on the upcoming Netflix horror film The Deliverance. Mo’Nique stars, replacing Octavia Spencer.
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But Mo’Nique said she has not yet reconciled with either Winfrey or Perry, both of whom declined to comment for THR’s piece. (Mo’Nique said she also harbors ill will toward Winfrey because Winfrey had several of Mo’Nique’s family members, including a brother who confessed to molesting Mo’Nique when she was seven and he was 13, on her talk show in 2010. Mo’Nique said that while she had given Winfrey her blessing to host that brother, she had not wished for the other family members to appear.)
In the piece, Mo’Nique thanked others in the industry for supporting her in the wake of the Oscar fallout—like Donald Glover, who cast her in a 2019 short, and Roseanne Barr, whom she defended in 2018 after Barr was fired from her ABC show due to a racist tweet. “She didn’t want me to get hurt defending her,” Mo’Nique said of her choice to publicly support Barr amidst the controversy. “I said, ‘I will stand for right, all day long. Whatever happens with us standing with my sister named Roseanne Barr, let the chips fall where they may. But what I will not do is turn my back on somebody that I know is not a racist.”
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