Since winning an Oscar in 2010 for her devastating performance as an abusive mother in Lee Daniels’s film Precious, Mo’Nique has acted in just four films. In a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actress famously claimed it was because she had been “blackballed.”
She explained:
I got a phone call from Lee Daniels maybe six or seven months ago. And he said to me, “Mo’Nique, you’ve been blackballed.” And I said, “I’ve been blackballed? Why have I been blackballed?” And he said, “Because you didn’t play the game.” And I said, “Well, what game is that?” And he gave me no response.
In response to the piece, Daniels explained what he meant, writing:
Mo’nique is a creative force to be reckoned with. Her demands through Precious were not always in line with the campaign. This soured her relationship with the Hollywood community. I consider her a friend. I have and will always think of her for parts that we can collaborate on. However, the consensus among the creative teams and powers thus far were to go another way with these roles.
Two years later (and one well-received Bessie Smith biopic later), Mo’Nique is still hopping mad, but her anger is no longer confined to Daniels.
During a performance at New York’s Apollo theater this weekend, she took to the stage (isn’t that more fun than “taking to Twitter”?) and shared her frustrations with the audience, claiming she was never “blackballed” at all. No, she was “whiteballed.”
Her comments were filmed by an audience member, who later uploaded the video to Instagram. Here’s what she said: