It was a year ago when Mo’Nique began her infamous boycott of Netflix because she believed she was being lowballed in comparison to her White female and Black male comedian counterparts. She was offered a reported $500K for a comedy special while the likes of Amy Shumer got $10M and Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle got around $20M each.
During an interview this past week, Mo’Nique recalls the many fireworks produced during her radio and TV talk show rounds in the aftermath of her Netflix stance, especially the showdown she had with fellow Oscar-winning actress Whoopi Goldberg on “The View.”
Last year, Mo’Nique, who won her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Precious, appeared on “The View” where she got unwanted and unsolicited advice from Goldberg, who won her Academy Award for her Best Supporting Actress in Ghost.
During that imbroglio, Goldberg told her bluntly, “I said if you had called me I could’ve schooled you on what was expected.”
As she told Vulture mag, Mo’Nique did not believe Goldberg had any advice to offer her.
“When you have a woman saying, ‘I could have schooled you,’ someone would say, ‘What was the schooling going to be?’ When I look at this woman you say is our icon and our legend — she is,” Mo’Nique told Vulture. “But, how many things has Whoopi Goldberg executive produced? Whoopi Goldberg has always been the help, and I say that humbly. So what is it that you’re going to school me on? I’ve been doing it for almost 30 years.”
Mo’Nique was also incensed and felt disrespected because she was only given three minutes to talk about inequality.
“This is a woman who says ‘I could have schooled you,’ and this is a woman who accepted Ted Danson in blackface, and our community praises this woman,” Mo’Nique added. “So oftentimes, we do it to ourselves. But, I just can’t. Understand, I love my sister. However, when you know you’re being fed the wrong food, you must say, ‘I can’t chew this, y’all.’”
When they were backstage later on, Mo’Nique said she told Goldberg that her intentions were to help other upcoming talents in Hollywood. That did little to ease tensions between the two stars.
“In that moment I knew I was looking at a woman who didn’t give a damn about me,” Mo’Nique said. “And if she’s telling me, ‘Stop worrying about that little girl who not here yet,’ well, she forgot about the ones that came before her who were worried about her.”
