Where has Mo’nique been lately? According to the actress, she’s apparently been “blackballed” from Hollywood following her 2009 Best Supporting Actress Oscar win for ‘Precious’. Just a week ago she said “Precious” director, Lee Daniels, confirmed her suspicions when he said that she was making unreasonable demands. In a recent interview with Don Lemon that aired Wednesday he says, “During the [Oscar] campaign, she was making unreasonable demands, and I remember thinking ‘this is when reverse racism happens.” He says that he did not use the term “blackball” with Mo’nique, but that she’s definitely fallen from grace due to her attitude. “You have to thank the producers of the film, you have to thank the studio, and she didn’t understand that. People aren’t going to respond well,” he said. “I love her, I’ve spoken to her. She’s brilliant, and I love working with brilliant people.” He goes on to say, “Sometimes artists get in their own way — I know I certainly do often, I have my own demons. You’ve gotta play ball. This is not just show — it is show business.”
Well, last night Mo’nique appeared on the show and said she was stunned by what Daniels said about her making ridiculous demands. “It shocked me… I was yelling at the screen, ‘Don, please ask him what the demands were!’” she explained, “There were no demands, there was a request from the movie studio that I fly to France for the Cannes Film Festival. I simply said, ‘I respectfully decline.’ had a couple of days downtime and I wanted to spend that with my husband and my kids‘” She also explained that Lionsgate kept pressuring her and pressuring her to go to Cannes, despite declining numerous times, until her husband asked if they were going to pay her. According to the actress, the studio responded that it would never pay for anyone to do promotional work for a movie, and Mo’Nique pointed out that she only received $50,000 for her role in “Precious.” She also hinted that perhaps there should have been compensation offered for travel to promote the movie. “It really wasn’t about the money and I am not complaining because I signed up to do it[“Precious”] with my friend [Daniels]. When the movie studio said we can’t pay you to do this, we didn’t have a problem with that.”
Mo’nique also said that she wasn’t blackballed because she was getting offers, they just didn’t make sense. “It wasn’t that I was blackballed like Mr. Daniels said… the phone was ringing and the scripts were coming but the offers that were associated with them made me say ‘I can’t accept that,’” she explained, adding that taking such offers would have sent a negative message to other African-American women.
According to Mo’nique she is focusing more on independent films, rather than big studio movies. Check out both interviews below.
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