Mo’Nique Says She’s Still Awaiting A Public Apology From Oprah Winfrey After Years-Long Feud w/ The Talk Show Host

Mo’Nique Says She’s Still Awaiting A Public Apology From Oprah Winfrey After Years-Long Feud w/ The Talk Show Host

Actress/comedienne Mo’Nique has been making amends with a lot of old friends. Well, except for Oprah Winfrey.

As previously reported, Mo’Nique and media icon Oprah Winfrey haven’t been on the best of terms for a while now, and it seems that nothing has changed.

Mo’Nique

If you didn’t know, the beef between Mo’Nique and Oprah Winfrey began brewing shortly after Mo’Nique’s estranged family appeared on an episode of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show.’ Initially, Winfrey informed the ‘Precious’ star that her older brother, Gerald Imes, would be appearing on the show to confess that he’d molested his sister, Mo’Nique, as a child. The alleged sexual abuse commenced when Mo’Nique was only 7 and her brother was 13 and lasted for several years. Throughout Mo’Nique’s career, she has opened up about the sensitive matter publicly.

Upon Mo’Nique’s sibling reaching out to Winfrey for a spot on the daytime phenomenon, Winfrey also invited Mo’Nique but she declined. Despite her refusal to accompany her perpetrator on live television, Mo’Nique still decided to give Winfrey the green light on her brother’s visit.

Oprah Winfrey

But, when the special aired on April 19, 2010, Mo’Nique felt highly blindsided and betrayed to see her other brother, mother, and father were a part of the broadcast as well.

According to ‘The Reading’ lead, she wasn’t on speaking terms with her mother and knew that her relatives had only participated for monetary gain.

In a recent interview, she said,

“[Me and my mother] were not on good terms. We weren’t even speaking. Then I see the show and I can tell that my mother is trying to make a dollar. I know my family.”

Amid ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ Mo’Nique’s brother, Stephen, also said the situation was being “blown out of proportion.”

Mo’Nique

Following the premiere, Mo’Nique reportedly attempted to reach out to Winfrey to address the situation but to no avail.

She detailed,

“I reached out to everybody I could to try to get to Oprah. No nothing. It just went dead.”

Due to Winfrey’s failure to return any of Mo’Nique’s calls, ‘The Parkers’ trouper eventually saw her at an event in honor of fellow actress Lupita Nyong’o after everything went down. Allegedly, Mo’Nique expressed her discontentment with her parents’ arrival on ‘The Opray Winfrey Show,’ but Winfrey maintained that Mo’Nique’s brother bombarded her by bringing them on set and offered an apology if she’d “done anything to offend” her.

Lupita Nyong’o

Additionally, Mo’Nique’s past quarrel with filmmaker Lee Daniels (seemingly) spilled into the feud. During the promotional run for the 2009 Lee-Daniels-directed Blockbuster, ‘Precious,’ in which Mo’Nique starred, things went left after she opted not to attend the Cannes Film Festival. Apparently, Lionsgate’s reluctance to pay Mo’Nique for her time, paired with her decision to spend downtime with her loved ones, influenced her move.

Mo’Nique, Lee Daniels, Oprah Winfrey, and Tyler Perry

Winfrey and Tyler Perry served on the producing committee. Mo’Nique later faulted Lee Daniels, along with Winfrey and Tyler Perry, for labeling her “difficult to work with,” contributing to her feeling “blackballed” in the industry.

Last year, Lee Daniels ultimately apologized to Mo’Nique for the part that he played by saying,

“I’m sorry for hurting you in any way that I did. [Mo’Nique] was my best friend. Y’all think that ‘Precious’ was just [me]… that was God working through both of us. And we gonna f*cking do it again. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Lee Daniels and Mo’Nique

Mo’Nique has done a number of interviews elaborating on her “elephants in the room” with Tyler Perry and Winfrey, who she has relentlessly blamed for choosing to stay quiet throughout her injustice as a strong-minded, opinionated, Black woman in Hollywood.

When speaking of her choice to not “meet negative with negative” in a 2018 sit-down to promote ‘A Wrinkle In Time,’ Winfrey said to the interviewer,

“It’s a law that if you meet negative with negative you will just have a combustive negative force of energy.”

She added,

“You can’t meet negative energy where it is. You have to rise above it; you have to transcend it. You have to be the light. It only takes a little bit of light to banish the darkness. It takes a lot of darkness to overcome the light. It takes just a little bit of light and we are warriors of the light. I would never stoop to try to meet somebody where they are negatively. [I] don’t care who they are.”

Currently, Mo’Nique is said to be “demanding” and “expecting” apologies from both Winfrey and Tyler Perry.

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below!

[VIA]