Mo’Nique is still insisting on having a public conversation with Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry. During her interview with The 85 South Show, Mo’Nique said she wants to sit down with Winfrey and Perry to hash out their years-long feud.
What happened between Mo’Nique, Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey?
Mo’Nique’s dissension with Winfrey and Perry became public after Mo’Nique refused to fly overseas to promote the 2009 film Precious. Winfrey and Perry signed on as producers in order to give the film a financial boost, as it was an independent project.
Mo’Nique was paid $50,000 for the role of Mary Jones in Precious, but her contract was with Lee Daniels, who directed the film, and their deal only required her to do promotion on a domestic level. She said that the problem came into play when Daniels sold the film to Lionsgate.
After Precious premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, it generated so much excitement and buzz. As a result, Lionsgate wanted Mo’Nique to attend the Cannes Film Festival to further promote the film. Winfrey and Perry even called her several times in an attempt to convince her to fly out to the film festival. Still, she refused to do so unless she was paid additional money since it wasn’t part of her contract.
In 2010, Mo’Nique won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but by then, rumors had already swirled that she was difficult to work with due to not wanting to do any international press. Mo’Nique blames Daniels, Winfrey and Perry for spreading rumors that she was difficult. (Since then, she and Daniels have squashed their feud.)
“Well, for the people that said I’m hard to work with, they’ve not worked with me. So I can’t even entertain it. Because they’ve not worked with me,” Mo’Nique said on The 85 South Show, according The Grio. “Because they’ve not worked with me. But when you have a man named Tyler Perry saying, ‘She’s difficult to work with,’ and you’ve never worked with me, and that cost me twelve years of my career.”
Mo’Nique and Lee Daniels made amends in 2022
In April 2022, Daniels publicly apologized to Mo’Nique while she was onstage performing a comedy show. Ts Madison helped reconcile things between Mo’Nique and Daniels.
“Wasn’t that God working? First of all, part of me trying to find my higher power was also understanding what that meant,” Daniels told The Hollywood Reporter about that moment onstage. “And that meant forgiveness, that meant apologizing, even if I didn’t understand what I was apologizing for. I had to understand that she was hurt, and that is my sister, and that I love her.”
Since then, Mo’Nique and Daniels have worked together on the 2024 horror film The Deliverance. Turns out, Mo’Nique is hoping the same will happen with Winfrey and Perry.
“I’m still waiting for Tyler Perry, still waiting for Oprah Winfrey to say, ‘Let’s have this public open conversation.’ Don’t run. Don’t run. Because that may be able to heal our community just like my son and I,” she said on The 85 South Show. “Why ever would I not talk about it every opportunity I get? Because you’ve cost my family that money. And what happens is we get so afraid of power that we’re too afraid to say what’s real.”