Mo'Nique: I'm 'difficult', 'tacky' and was blackballed after Oscar win

Precious star who won best supporting actress award five years ago says Hollywood has shunned her for being ‘tactless’ and that parts in subsequent Lee Daniels movies were offered to her then given to Oprah Winfrey

The Oscar-winning actor Mo’Nique has claimed she was “blackballed” by Hollywood following her victorious turn as an abusive mother in the harrowing 2009 Lee Daniels drama Precious.

In an essay to be published in the 27 February issue of the Hollywood Reporter, seen by E! News, the 47-year-old actor said she only found out a few months ago that she had been deemed persona non grata by studios.

“I got a phone call from Lee Daniels,” said the actor. “And he said to me, ‘Mo’Nique, you’ve been blackballed.’ I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘Because you didn’t play the game.’”

The actor reminded her director that she famously did not campaign for her best supporting actress Oscar win in 2010.

Mo’Nique goes on to suggest that her absence from the screen - the actor has just a handful of relatively minor film and television credits between 2009 and last year’s Blackbird - is because she is “difficult,” “tactless” or “tacky”, adding: “That’s why I have my beautiful husband because he’s so full of tact. I’m just a girl from Baltimore. But being from that place, you learn not to let anybody take advantage of you.”

Mo’Nique cites two roles eventually taken by Oprah Winfrey, that of Forest Whitaker’s wife in Daniels’ The Butler and that of Richard Pryor’s grandmother in a forthcoming Daniels biopic, as examples of parts she was initially offered but later discovered she had lost. “They all just went away,” she said.

Daniels issued a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, which reads: “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.”

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/19/monique-im-difficult-tacky-and-was-blackballed-after-oscar-win