Back in March 2010, Mo’Nique won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her performance in “Precious.” Since then she has opened up about what she says is her being blackballed in the entertainment industry for nearly a decade at the hands of media moguls such as Oprah Winfrey.
Winfrey is also the same talk show host who had an interview with one of Mo’Nique’s family members days after her big career accomplishment. Winfrey sat with the comedian’s older brother, Gerald Imes, who sexually assaulted her as a child. It was reportedly the first time he had admitted that he began sexually abusing his younger sister when she was just 7 years old. He was 13 at the time and said he had been molested himself as a child.
Imes shared his belief that the molestation triggered his spats with drugs and alcohol at age 11, which led to the assault, a resurfaced clip from “The Oprah Winfrey Show” shows.
“Oprah needs to answer for this cause interviewing Monique’s abusive bother after her a historic Oscar win, this doesn’t make sense. Plus it’s starting to look bad for Oprah,” wrote one person on X. Another added, “Oprah definitely seems like she has a mean, cold side. I just wonder why she was so mean to Mo’nique. Like Mo said, Oprah crossed her on many different levels.”
Mo’nique’s reason for hating Oprah is so justified cause why would Oprah interview her brother right after her Oscar win… 🥴 pic.twitter.com/beuLE3IarT
— ❄️🗝️ (@DiaryOfKeysus) February 8, 2024
Mo’Nique said she appreciated Winfrey for informing her ahead of time about interviewing her brother but stated that she “wanted no part of it.” She claims Winfrey offered to drop the entire episode but Mo’Nique insisted due to her brother’s potentially changed ways. But the betrayal came after she began seeing promos for the episode featuring her other family members.
“I start seeing commercials with my mother and my father and my other brother who used to be my manager who knew the fear I had with the brother onstage, right? We never talked about my mother being there,” Mo’Nique told Shannon Sharpe on the “Club Shay Shay” podcast this week.
Her father, Gerald Imes Sr., and mother, Alice, and brother Stephen, all appeared on the episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” to discuss how “heartbreaking” it was to accept Gerald’s actions.
Sharped asked if she felt betrayed by Winfrey to which Mo’Nique replied, “That is exactly who I felt and how I feel.”
“I understand it,” she added, “But you betrayed me sis.”
The Baltimore native said she reached out to the OWN creator but her efforts to communicate “went dead.” Three years after the interview, she confronted Winfrey at a celebration party for actress Lupita Nyong’o in honor of her Academy Award nomination for “Best Supporting Actress” in “12 Years a Slave.”
“Oprah Winfrey was sitting on my right. And then I turned to her and said, ‘Now I need to talk to you.’ There were some phenomenal Black women there. You could hear a pin drop,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Since you didn’t want to return my calls, for whatever reason, I’m going to say this right here.’”
The “Parkers” actress asked Winfrey why she invited her parents on the show due to their severed relationship at the time, but Winfrey stated that she had no idea her entire family was showing up, supposedly stating, “I didn’t know anything about that. Winfrey supposedly added, “If I had done anything to offend you, I apologize.”
She also insists that she was offered the lead role in Lee Daniels‘ film “The Butler,” and another as the grandmother in a Richard Pryor biopic — both of which went to Winfrey despite being offered to her first.
Mo’Nique laid further into Winfrey, stating, “You’ve been unfair, you’ve been unjust and you watched a Black woman be thrown under the bus and you said nothing.”
Elsewhere during her interview with Shannon Sharpe, she discussed the origins of her feuds with D.L. Hughley, Tiffany Haddish, and Tyler Perry.
