Veteran comic and actress Mo’Nique, who lives in Braselton, covered a wide array of grievances against a variety of A-list celebrities and Hollywood power brokers she said have wronged her in a three-hour podcast with Shannon Sharpe.
Sharpe hit the jackpot last month talking to former Georgia resident and outspoken comic Katt Williams, which has been seen a whopping 58 million times on YouTube.
His latest podcast featuring Mo’Nique has been seen 6.4 million times in just over 24 hours since its release.
“If I was a white woman, do you know what my name would be? Melissa McCarthy,” Mo’Nique said. “If I was a white woman, my name would be Melissa McCarthy. Same track record! Five-year sitcom in syndication. The opportunities are not the same.”
Mo’Nique, 56, co-starred in UPN’s “The Parkers” for five seasons from 1999 to 2004. McCarthy’s “Mike & Molly” on CBS ran for six seasons from 2010 to 2016 and she has starred in a string of films and has garnered two Oscar nominations. Mo’Nique did win an Academy Award for her role in 2009 in “Precious,” but she ended up in spats with Oprah Winfrey, Lee Daniels and Tyler Perry that she felt kept her from truly leveraging her Oscar success.
“People have a hard time with a Black woman over 200 pounds telling the truth,” she said. “People who look like us should be grateful we got invited to the party. ... I’ve dealt with that my whole life.”
She said Kevin Hart offered to work with her to revive the talk show she had on BET out of Atlanta from 2009 to 2012 but later heard from Hart’s manager allegedly telling her that Hart “doesn’t want anything to do with Mo’Nique.” Although she said Hart later told her that was a “miscommunication,” she and Hart have still not worked together.
She also felt “betrayed” by Oprah Winfrey for airing an episode with her brother who molested her as a child. While Winfrey did ask Mo’Nique if it was okay to have him on her show and Mo’Nique gave her blessing, she was upset that Winfrey also included her mother.
“Had Oprah Winfrey said, ‘I’m [going to] have your mama [on the show],’ I would have said, ‘Shut that [expletive] down,” Mo’Nique said.
She said she is still awaiting a public apology from Winfrey.
Tiffany Haddish in 2018 in an interview said she was glad she didn’t have a business manager like Mo’Nique’s husband Sidney Hicks.
She told Sharpe that her retort is simple: “Tiffany, if you had a husband like mine, you may not have two DUIs.”
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