Two weeks after rapper 50 Cent announced he was standing behind comedian Mo’Nique, vowing to “put her back on” and talk to several movers and shakers in Hollywood to re-open doors for the Oscar-winning actress, she is set up for one of the biggest comebacks ever.
As he does with many of his campaigns, he made the declaration publicly, “We fvck wit @therealmoworldwide over here so if you don’t like her unfollow this page.”
What makes the moment sweeter is that her grand return to the big stage is with the person she believes blackballed her over a decade ago: Lee Daniels.
Daniels is the director for the new Netflix thriller, “Demon House,” and secured Mo’Nique in his cast. This is the first project they have worked on together in 13 years.
On Friday, April 1, Daniels publicly apologized at the St. George Theatre in Staten Island to his former friend for “hurting” her.
“It took me a long time to realize,” he said on a stage of almost 3,000 people. “I am so sorry for hurting you in any way.”
“She was my best friend y’all — my best friend. Y’all think that ‘Precious’ was just [us]? That wasn’t. That was God working through both of us.”
“And we go f—king do it again!” he revealed with a happy dance.
According to Deadline, the “Precious” star has been cast alongside two other Oscar-nominated dynamos, Andra Day (“The United States vs. Billie Holiday”) and Aunjanue Ellis (“King Richard”) in the upcoming film centered around exorcism. She will be replacing Octavia Spencer, who won the Academy Awards’ “Best Supporting Actress” trophy in 2012, because of a scheduling conflict with another one of her projects, an Apple TV+ television show “Truth Be Told.”
Two other stars connected to this film are “Stranger Things” actors Caleb McLaughlin and Rob Morgan.
The move comes after 50 Cent’s month-long campaign to get her back on the scene. He started speaking to Perry and others behind the scenes and through social media.
He made his first public declaration on March 4, stating he was in a trance after seeing her stand-up performance over the Super Bowl Weekend. He captioned a post on Instagram, “I went to see @therealmoworldwide stand up show super bowl weekend. oh sh-t! [face-palm emoji] it was so good, she had my ass in a trance. you gotta go check her out the sh*t was [fire]”
In a different post, he produced a hilarious mash-up of her “Precious” performance and a scene from “Power” that fans loved.
“I Gotta get @therealmoworldwide back in pocket,” he wrote. “We only suppose to cancel sh-t that ain’t good for the culture. we need you to WIN again now MONIQUE.”
50 publicly called on Perry and Winfrey to end the beef with the comedian and on March 15, he posted “I talk to Tyler today he told me he never told anyone not to hire @therealmoworldwide and he is happy I decided to work with her. He said he couldn’t speak for Oprah, but he is sure she is fine with Monique and has even brought her up for things Monique has no idea about. I’m so happy for Mo right now! GLG 🚦GreenLightGang 🎯 She Back.”
After news dropped about Mo’Nique’s casting in Daniel’s new film, he boasted, “See now @therealmoworldwide is back, all they needed was a little motivation to stop the bullsh-t. Now we are all happy, let’s get back to work.”
In 2015, the “Queen of Comedy” told the media she believed Daniels, Oprah Winfrey, and Tyler Perry conspired against her to get her “blackballed” in the film industry because she didn’t do promotional runs for the movie “Precious” leading up to the award season without compensation in 2010.
She said seven years ago, “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.”
Daniels, who was flying high on his successful Fox series “Empire” said in response to her allegations, “Her demands through ‘Precious’ were not always in line with the campaign. This soured her relationship with the Hollywood community.”
Despite “playing ball,” the Maryland native still won the “Best Supporting Actress” Oscar that year for her role as Mary Lee Johnston, opposite Gabourey Sidibe in the movie.
She later said in a separate interview that her former best friend was upset because she did not thank him at the Academy ceremony, “Mr. Daniels had a problem that I didn’t say his name the night of the Oscar awards.”
The feud lasted for years, with Daniels denying he got her blackballed and saying, “Mo’Nique blackballed her.”
On May 13, 2017, during her “Mo’Nique’s Pre Mother’s Day Comedy Special” set at the Apollo Theater, the funnygal incorporated the “blackball drama” into her show.
“I was whiteballed by some Black d—- who had no balls. Thank you, Mr. Lee Daniels. Thank you, Mr. Tyler Perry. Thank you, Ms. Oprah Winfrey,” she half joked. “No, baby, I wasn’t blackballed. I was f—— up by some n—— who had no balls. And see, I know they like to say, ‘Mo’Nique, you talk too motherf—— much.’ It would kill me not to say the real s—.”
“Y’all can suck my d— if I had one!” she ended the bit.
Amid the backlash from her comments, Mo’Nique took to her Periscope podcast with her husband to talk about the deep-seated trauma she experienced by her colleagues turning their backs on her, specifically singling out Daniels, Perry, Winfrey, and her sister in comedy Sheryl Underwood.
She said of them all, Winfrey’s betrayal included bringing her family on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”— disregarding her wishes— to talk about family dirt and secrets. Mo’Nique said she shared with the talk show host her brother molested her as a child once during an intimate conversation and she was not in good standing with her mother, never thinking the “The Butler” actress would make a show about it.
In 2013, at an Oscars party, she confronted the OWN Network founder and said, “Can you imagine what it feels like to grow up as a little girl and watch someone and say, ‘When I grow up, I wanna be just like you’ and the person that you try to have [as] your example … this is the very woman that brings my mama on your show?”
Now with the Queens rapper behind her, Perry and Daniels on board to support Mo’Nique’s career, the world is watching to see if Winfrey comes around.
