It’s the Year of Truth.
Between Katt Williams opening 2024 with his 58 million-views-and-counting “Club Shay Shay” interview with Shannon Sharpe, Stephen A. Smith verbally kneecapping everyone’s least favorite portly critic and Jay-Z keeping it a band at the Grammys, Black celebrities have gone thermonuclear with the messiness, and winter is barely half over.
Mo’Nique just joined the pack of wolves with her own “Club Shay Shay” interview on Wednesday.
We knew from Sharpe’s interview style that he would let Mo’Nique cook, and we know from Mo’Nique’s last few years of interviews that it would be a doozy. She gave the masses what they expected, all the while letting everyone know several times that she and Williams were shit-talking spirit animals.
Mo’Nique didn’t go as scorched earth as Williams did, but she did have a few surprises and no small amount of her signature humor (hear her thoughts on Sharpe finding himself a good woman who can cook naked) as she clapped at folks and insisting she loves them in the same breath.
At five minutes shy of three hours, Mo’Nique said a lot. But here are some of the juiciest nuggets from her “Club Shay Shay:”
Her venom for Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry is eternal
Mo’Nique has for years pointed at Winfrey and Perry as the architects of her alleged Hollywood blackballing…allegations she repeated at length during the podcast.
“Oprah” is certainly Mo’Nique’s most repeated name during the interview, as she admitted that Winfrey was her first career inspiration as a heavyset Black woman on television in the 1980s, when there were exceedingly few. But Mo’Nique insists that Winfrey has repeatedly held her back or kept her from cherry roles.
Mo’Nique allegedly has a (allegedly legal) recording of Perry admitting that he spread false rumors about her being difficult to work with in Hollywood. She forced Sharpe to admit that he heard the audio, which clearly made him uncomfortable.
Sharpe asked Mo’Nique what it would take to forgive Winfrey and Perry, to which she said, “Take accountability.”
“He cost my family millions,” she said. “I want that back.”
She has static with D.L. Hughley…
Williams made a point to praise D.L. Hughley during his “Club Shay Shay” interview, but Mo’Nique said that Williams should’ve rolled Hughley into his critiques of the living Kings of Comedy.
She mentioned the headlining contract issues over which she and Hughley have tangled in the past, but she spent more time discussing her appearance on The D.L. Hughley Show.
Hughley wasn’t present for Mo’Nique’s appearance on his radio show, but during a routine game of Would You Rather, co-host Jasmine Sanders allegedly asked Mo’Nique “Would you rather your husband [manager Sidney Hicks] sleep with Lee Daniels with a condom or Karrine Steffans without one?”
“I say to the team, ‘How does that uplift our community?’” she asked at the time. “Tell me the joke in that. I don’t know what you’re insinuating and you are bringing up people that have nothing to do with nothing.
Mo’Nique said she called Hughley immediately after the segment and was met with a cavalier response. She said her lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the show to make sure the segment didn’t air.
Hughley responded Wednesday with a healthy dose of fat-shaming opprobrium, repeatedly calling Mo’Nique a “liar” in his Instagram clip and insisting that he didn’t air the “Would You Rather?” clip because she asked him not to.
…and Tiffany Haddish…
Poor Haddish can’t seem to catch a break. First, she caught strays in Williams’ “Club Shay Shay” interview, and Mo’Nique followed suit with a six-year-old axe to grind.
In 2018, Mo’Nique asked fans to boycott Netflix over a perceived wage gap with Black woman-performed comedy specials. GQ asked Haddish about the issue in 2008: “I don’t live her life. I don’t have that husband of hers. I’m looking at how [Netflix has] opened up so many opportunities for Black females and comedy.”
Sharpe asked Mo’Nique about Haddish’s comments: “When I saw that I said, ‘Tiffany if you had a husband like mine, you may not have two DUIs,’” Mo’Nique said. “If you had a husband like mine, you may not have been caught up in what looks like grooming a child. And I say all of that with no judgment.”
Yikes. No judgment, I’m sure.
…and Kevin Hart, whom she said betrayed her
It’s the second time in a little over a month that someone came for Hart’s neck on “Club Shay Shay.”
Mo’Nique prefaced her comments about him by admitting that Hart wrote a check to support her when she was down bad and that she would be “forever grateful” for it…though she made a point to say that she paid it back with interest.
When Mo’Nique was a guest on Hart’s podcast “Comedy Gold Minds” in 2021, he introduced her as an “auntie, a mama, a spirit” and called her “Mama Mo.” She spoke on the podcast about Winfrey, Perry and Precious director Lee Daniels, who had not yet publicly apologized to her.
Hart said he’d reach out to Perry to coordinate squashing the beef, to which Perry was allegedly not amenable. But she said Hart promised her he would executive produce and partner with her on whatever she was working on, which excited her because she and Hicks were working on a talk show deal.
Hart’s manager Dave Becky allegedly told Mo’Nique’s production company that Hart wanted nothing to do with her.
“I called Kevin Hart immediately and told him, ‘They said you didn’t wanna work with me,’” she said. “He said ‘It’s just a miscommunication, we’re gonna talk Tuesday.’”
“That was two years ago…I’ve never talked to Kevin Hart again, That’s what we’re faced with…you allow someone to come between your relationship with a woman you said was like your mother.”