Mo’Nique is reclaiming her narrative one major battle at a time. After slaying the giant that is Netflix and scoring her stand-up special on the streamer, Mo’Nique is now ready to take down the people who initially derailed her career. It is a story we’ve heard 100 times over, but Mo has just resurfaced a video compilation explaining how she fell out with Oprah Winfrey, Lee Daniels, and Tyler Perry. While she and Lee have kissed and made up, she is still looking for apologies from Oprah and Perry.
Mo’Nique was already an established comic and television star when she shocked the world with her turn in Precious. In the film, the comedian played a character named Mary who was the mother of Precious, an overweight, abused, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child. The movie made her an Oscar winner and should have propelled her to the career level enjoyed by the likes of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer. However, Mo swiftly disappeared from sight and was labeled difficult by her peers.
In the years since, Mo’Nique reveals that she was simply punished for saying no to a film festival after having already fulfilled her obligations to Lee Daniels. Precious was made on a small budget and only got endorsed by Oprah and Tyler after it was made. Based on what Mo’Nique was initially paid and her contract to Lee, she was not required to attend any additional events and opted to stay home with her family whom she’d already lost a lot of time from.
The narrator even explained that Mo’Nique was on her third marriage and really wanted to make things work with her husband. Sprinkled in between these clips are sound bites from Oprah, Tyler, and Lee, all painting Mo’Nique out to be difficult, hard to work with, and unwilling to do her job. Nonetheless, Mo still took home the Oscar that year.
The video seems to focus mainly on Mo’Nique and Oprah and how similar their lives are. Mo’Nique visited Oprah on set when she was a news anchor in Baltimore, and they connected. She said she told Oprah she wanted to be just like her one day. Mo’Nique remembers Oprah words of advice were ‘You gotta work really hard.’ And that’s what she did, according to the comedian.
As the years went by, their paths continued to cross until the film Precious. Mo’Nique said she connected even more with Oprah on this and shared her story. The two women grew up in households where they were abused by family members. Unfortunately, Oprah exploited her story by having Mo’s brother who molested her on the Oprah Winfrey Show without consulting with Mo’Nique first. Mo took this to be a malicious attempt to hurt her personally.
The video goes on to allude that Oprah’s gripe with Mo is deeply personal and complicated. They even cut to Oprah refusing to speak on their beef in a press interview for a film, calling it all too “negative.” Mo’Nique, however, is not afraid to talk about it. In her caption, she says, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this video was worth a million to me.” Fans in the comments seem to be ready to see these two settle things and said, “OPRAH AINT GOD YALL. Oprah has shown us multiple times who she really is.”
Do you think these two will ever discuss their differences?
