As rolling out previously reported, Mo’Nique ripped apart Lee Daniels, Oprah and Tyler Perry during a scorched-earth comedy routine at the historic Apollo Theater last weekend. She says the triumvirate of Hollywood power brokers have effectively blackballed — or as Mo’Nique prefers to say, “white-balled” — the comedian from the movie making business.
But while she was doing the routine at the time, she and husband Sidney Hicks insisted that what she said was absolutely the truth and that both Oprah and Perry had participated in Daniels’ campaign to “blackball” her and label her as “difficult to work with.”
In speaking to TMZ, she compared herself to one of her heroes, Richard Pryor, saying, “The reason why we love Richard Pryor was because of what?”
“The truth,” Hicks finished for her.
“The truth, baby,” Mo’Nique agreed. “He told the truth. And there were people that said, ‘Oh, how can you say that?’ And is it coming from my heart? Everything I say comes from my heart. I’m not apologetic about it.”
Hicks added, “She started off by saying simply, ‘People keep asking me about the blackball.’ And then she began to share the information regarding the blackball.”
Hicks explained Oprah and Perry’s part in the blackballing saying that “they stood by” when in fact, “What people don’t know is in between the sets of Precious, Mo’Nique was sitting with Lee Daniels eating crab legs. That doesn’t sound like you’re having a difficult time with someone.”
Mo’Nique then said she refused to back down from her statements. If anything, she’s doubling down on her stance: “We not no hiders, we not no runners. And when a sister says to me, ‘Aren’t you afraid of the blowback?’ what I would say to you as another woman, ‘Aren’t you afraid to even ask the question am I afraid of the blowback?’ because you would say, ‘Am I getting blowback for simply being honest?’ ”
Listen to the new secretly recorded conversations between Mo’Nique and Tyler Perry
