I’m not a fan of Steve Harvey. I think he pushes a mainstream version of misogynoir by wrapping it up in family values and family-friendly slut-shaming. That being said, I watched several minutes of Steve’s interview with Mo’Nique and… Steve did his best. He was less wrong than Mo’Nique. For those of you who don’t remember, a decade ago, Mo’Nique was picking up lots of Best Supporting Actress awards for her role in Precious. She was winning those awards without campaigning. I remember it well: everyone agreed that Mo’Nique gave an incredible performance, but when producers asked her to do all of the regular Oscar campaign stuff – attend screenings, Q&A sessions, do interviews and TV appearances – she said no. Even more than that, she said she wouldn’t do any of it without getting paid. She ended up winning the Oscar but losing the war – she was legitimately blackballed in Hollywood and given the “difficult” reputation because she wouldn’t play the game, and because she was so public about not playing the game.
In the years that followed, Mo’Nique has given interviews about how she knows she was largely blackballed from the industry by powerful African-American artists like Oprah, Tyler Perry and Lee Daniels, that those people have refused to speak up for her or give her work. Part of me thinks that Mo’Nique’s initial unwillingness to play the game came from a discomfort on her part, or simply not knowing that 99% of all Oscar nominees are asked to do the same thing. But in the years that followed, I believe that all things are true: Mo’Nique was legitimately blackballed by powerful Hollywood people – many of them African-American – AND she’s a difficult, unprofessional woman with a martyr complex. She doesn’t get that by publicly telling Oprah and Tyler Perry to suck her d–k, of course there will be long-term consequences. I mean, duh. Don’t do that.
Anyway, Mo’Nique and Steve Harvey got into it on his daytime talk show this week. Their conversation is just that – a very civil back-and-forth, no yelling, no tears. It’s very an interesting watch, but I came away from it feeling like Steve was making the better points. Here are the videos:
Photos courtesy of WENN.
