Mo'Nique accepts the award for best supporting actress for ‘Precious’ at the 82nd Academy Awards in Hollywood. Picture: Reuters/Gary Hershorn
Mo'Nique wants a public apology from Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry.
The 55-year-old actress has opened up about her rift with the Hollywood heavyweights, who produced her film “Precious”, and the production's director Lee Daniels, which began after she declined to promote the 2009 movie as she wouldn't be compensated for her time, and she claimed resulted in her being “blackballed” by the movie industry.
She told “The Hollywood Reporter”: “I said, ‘Oprah, I’m doing a talk show. I’m doing a comedy tour. I have a husband and I have babies.
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“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.’ So we mutually agreed to disagree. That was it.
“Next thing I know, I am considered ‘difficult’ and ‘hard to work with.’”
While she has since mended her differences with Daniels, the outlet noted she “still demands and expects public apologies” from Oprah and Perry.
Relations with the talk show host declined a month after Mo'Nique won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “Precious”, when the 69-year-old media mogul hosted the comedian’s family on an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show”.
While Oprah called Mo'Nique before recording the show to tell her that her brother Gerald Imes wanted to apologise for molesting her as a child, the “Shadowboxer” actress declined to take part but gave her consent for the episode to go forward.
However, when it aired, Imes was joined on the show by their parents and other brother and “downplayed the abuse”, with Mo’Nique upset because she claimed Oprah knew she was “not on good terms” with her mother so wouldn’t have signed off on her appearance.
She said: “I reached out to everybody I could to try to get to Oprah. No. Nothing. It just went dead.”
In 2014, the pair found themselves at the same event, where Mo'Nique publicly called out Oprah for ignoring her.
Before giving her speech, the “Almost Christmas” actress recalled taking a seat next to Oprah.
She said: “I said, ‘You know we’re going to have to talk, right?’ She said, ‘Mm-hmm.’ And I just patted her on her knee and got up.”
Mo’Nique then addressed the room and recalled: “Oprah Winfrey was sitting on my right. And then I turned to her and said, ‘Now I need to talk to you.’ There were some phenomenal black women there. You could have heard a pin drop.
“I said, ‘Since you didn’t want to return my calls, for whatever reason, I’m going to say this right here.’”
She claimed she then asked why her parents had been invited onto the show when Oprah had been told Mo'Nique was estranged from them, and the talk show host told her she had only invited her brother and the rest of the family had just showed up on the day of recording, something which the actress thinks was a lie.
She claimed Oprah told her: “’I’m going to look into your mother and father being on the show, because I didn’t know anything about that’, (then she added) something like, ‘If I’ve done anything to offend you, I apologise.’“