*Mo’Nique is speaking out about her years-long feud with Oprah Winfrey, saying she’s still waiting for an apology from the former talk show queen for featuring her dysfunctional family members on an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” after the comedian won an Oscar for her role in “Precious.”
Mo’Nique had publicly revealed that she was molested by her older brother when she was age 7 and the abuse went on for years. Winfrey invited the brother on the show to unpack the family drama and she allegedly notified Mo’Nique ahead of time that her “brother had called her and he wanted to come on the show to let her know how parents can watch out for predators,” Mo’Nique said in a new profile for The Hollywood Reporter. “She then said, ‘Do you want to come on the show, because he wants to apologize to you?’ I said, ‘Oprah, I don’t want no part of that.’”
Mo’Nique gave “her blessing” for the episode but was blindsided when Winfrey also invited her parents on the show, and they allegedly downplayed her abuse.
Mo’Nique wasn’t speaking to her mother at the time, and Winfrey was allegedly aware of this.
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“Then I see the show and I can tell that my mother is trying to make a dollar. I know my family,” Mo’Nique tells THR.
Mo claims she tried to get in contact with Oprah after the show aired, but was ghosted by the media mogul.
“I reached out to everybody I could to try to get to Oprah. No. Nothing. It just went dead,” she said.
Mo’Nique would get her chance to confront Winfrey years later at a party for then-Oscar nominee Lupita Nyong’o.
“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 have heard a pin drop. I said, ‘Since you didn’t want to return my calls, for whatever reason, I’m going to say this right here,’” Mo’Nique recalls.
Winfrey allegedly denied inviting Mo’s parents on the show, claiming they just showed up the day of taping, which Mo’Nique “suspects was a lie.”
“I’m going to look into your mother and father being on the show, because I didn’t know anything about that,” Winfrey allegedly told Mo’Nique a the party, adding “something like, ‘If I’ve done anything to offend you, I apologize,’” according to Mo’Nique.
Mo’Nique is not satisfied with the half-apology and is still waiting for Winfrey to publicly apologize.
