Shannon Sharpe did it again. On February 7, the football Hall of Famer sat down with comedian and actor Mo’Nique for a nearly three-hour-long episode of his Club Shay Shay podcast, and just like when he infamously hosted Katt Williams in January, clips from the interview began going viral online even before the episode finished streaming on YouTube. In fact, Mo’Nique references Williams’s interview early and often throughout, going so far as to joke that the two of them are “non-biological†fraternal twins because of their shared need to tell the truth.
And so, in that spirit, Mo’Nique takes the opportunity to sound off on the various narratives she’s been entangled in throughout her career, from being labeled “difficult to work with†by Tyler Perry in the wake of refusing to do non-contractually obligated promotion for her Oscar-winning role in the movie Precious, to the origins of her feud with D.L. Hughley, to the time she sued Netflix for discriminatory pay practices, and more. Of course, she’s talked about much of this in the past, but rarely all in one sitting and with this much candor. To wit, while discussing Perry, she references a phone call she secretly recorded with him in which the director admitted to circulating the rumor that she was difficult to work with; Sharpe confirms he listened to this recording prior to the interview. Mo’Nique goes on to cite the millions of dollars in opportunities she’s lost thanks to the rumor, including being cast, then replaced, in the role of Cookie on Empire and a handshake deal with Kevin Hart where he agreed to executive-produce a revival of her talk show, The Mo’Nique Show, until his manager Dave Becky stepped in and allegedly said, “Kevin doesn’t want anything to do with Mo’Nique.â€
Elsewhere in the interview, Mo’Nique talks about other people she believes have slighted her throughout her career, including Oprah Winfrey and Tiffany Haddish. Of Winfrey, she says that the mogul — who was a producer on Precious — was privately supportive of Mo’Nique’s choice to abstain from doing free press for the movie but declined to voice her support publicly, then produced an episode of her talk show about Mo’Nique being molested by her brother, in which she interviewed Mo’Nique’s parents without her permission. Of Haddish, she mentions a 2018 interview the comedian gave to GQ, in which she referenced Mo’Nique’s business practices and said she was “glad†she didn’t have a husband and manager like hers. “Tiffany, if you had a husband like mine, you may not have two DUIs,†Mo’Nique tells Sharpe she thought at the time. “If you had a husband like mine, you may not be caught up in what looks like you could have been grooming a child.â€
Aside from airing personal grievances, Mo’Nique speaks at various points about the discrimination and unfair treatment she — and others like Taraji P. Henson — have faced in Hollywood as Black women (“If I was a white woman, do you know what my name would be? Melissa McCarthy.â€); shared her critique about America’s schooling system (“I always felt like something was off. When they were teaching me about history, we were always the savages, and we were always the bad people, and then these white people be all the heroes.â€); and explained how she still hasn’t been fairly compensated with residuals for her sitcom The Parkers. The interview is jam-packed with quotable moments, but it’s best watched in full. If, for the remainder of 2024, every prominent comedian alive decided to sit down with Sharpe and talk their shit, I, for one, would welcome it.