The Oscar winner had every right to fight for the pay she felt she deserved. But the actor-comedian, who notably portrayed Nicole “Nikki” Ann Parker Oglevee on the iconic sitcom “The Parkers,” is so funny — and not enough conversations about Mo’Nique in recent years have centered just on that. This stand-up special ― her seventh overall, first for Netflix and first since 2016 ― is rightly being hailed as a “reintroduction.”
The special begins with Mo’Nique en route to the stage as we hear a voice saying “Mo’Nique is a legend” while another says “She burned too many bridges and her career is over.” There is also audio of Charlamagne Tha God calling her “Donkey of the Day” on the popular radio show “The Breakfast Club.”
It was during those same years that Mo’Nique developed her instincts to protect those perceived as vulnerable. In one instance, she approached the bullies in her school for mocking her classmate in special education. In another, she stood up to a racist school administrator that noticeably segregated the students by race.
I know intimately what that experience feels like, so I understand deeply how it impacted her to watch her Uncle Tina struggle with alcoholism because her mother couldn’t love her the way she needed to be loved. How it made Mo’Nique afraid to reveal to her grandmother who she really was due to the fear of losing her family.
Overall, Mo’Nique tackles hard subject matter and talks about the worst in people, including or especially family. She describes her mother as a gambler, her father as an alcoholic, one brother as a molester and another as a thief who tried to commit fraud in her name.
There is lighter fare in the set. This same grandmother also gave Mo’Nique the kind of instructions about giving head that lead to involuntary hospitalization at a psychiatric ward. And by the time she came to grips with her attractions to men and women, Mo’Nique still had to tell her current, and third, husband, she shares.
So much has happened to Mo’Nique, but she says she has made peace with her past. Some of the people she’s publicly fought now understand her — including Lee Daniels, whom she mentions in her set and is sitting in the audience. The two are once again working together — first on the BET+ film “The Reading,” which premiered in February, and next on “The Deliverance,” an upcoming horror film for Netflix.
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