Oscar-winning actress Mo'Nique called out Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry and Lee Daniels in a (totally NSFW) standup bit at the Apollo Theater.
UPDATE: Why Oprah Winfrey jumped out of her car to talk to a stranger
"It would kill me not to say the real (bleep)," she says in the segment captured and posted on Instagram here.
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She indicated the show would be a memorable one in an Instagram message posted ahead of time.
"It's goin' down, baby!" she teased.
And it sure did.
Mo’Nique, who appeared in Atlanta-filmed "Almost Christmas" during the 2016 holiday movie season and in HBO's locally filmed "Bessie" in 2015, made headlines years ago with her very outspoken comments about being “blacklisted” in Hollywood following her Academy Award-winning role in “Precious.”
MORE: Our interview with the cast of "Almost Christmas"
She began her acceptance speech with, “First, I would like to thank the Academy for showing it can be about the performance and not about the politics.” That apparently didn’t go over so well and Mo’Nique said she got a reputation for being “difficult.”
"When people say to me, 'You're so straightforward,' my response is, 'Are you not?' When did honesty ever become a secret?," she told me during a 2015 interview. "I don't know any other way to be. We speak of Hollywood like it's this magical, mysterious place. It's just a place, made up of people."
At the time she was promoting her indie "Blackbird." The movie’s plot, about a teen struggling to accept himself, in some ways paralleled her own narrative of dealing with the aftermath of honesty.
“We hope people will choose to be what they had no choice in being,” she said. “The hope is that when you leave that movie you are unafraid to have that real conversation. Let’s open up and talk.”
She's certainly been opening up and talking. Two years ago, she released emails that she said indicated Daniels initially was interested in having her play the role of Cookie on his hit series "Empire." The role ultimately went to Taraji P. Henson (who starred in the Atlanta-filmed and Oscar-nominated "Hidden Figures."
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Mo'Nique discussed the matter with Essence at the time.
We interviewed Daniels in 2013, when he gave the commencement address at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His comments regarding "Precious" were nothing but gracious and he praised Mo'Nique's performance.
“I didn’t think I could do anything more rewarding than ‘Precious.’ I don’t do a film for public reaction. I do films that I want to see or that my kids will remember," he said. "I don’t do movies for awards and I don’t think about them. I only think about them when people like you ask about them.”
Rather than gunning for awards, he told me at the time, he is grateful for audience reaction, “When people say, ‘Thank you for finally getting this story out.’”
