Mo’Nique discusses her sexuality.
in a wide-ranging stand-up show My Name Is Mo’NiqueThe 55-year-old Oscar-winning actress, now streaming on Netflix, recalled growing up in Baltimore and witnessing her grandmother MiMi’s troubled relationship with one of her children, made difficult because the devout MiMi “couldn’t grasp that she had a gay daughter.” Mo’Nique said he watched “Uncle Tina” and MiMi “fight” with each other, causing “confusion”.
“And when my grandma left, I felt scared because I couldn’t tell my grandma who her granddaughter really was,” Mo’Nique tearfully said, referring to herself and her secret sexuality.
“I loved how she admired me,” the comedian added, “I couldn’t tell my grandmother my secret thoughts and fantasies because I … didn’t want her to leave this world thinking she had failed. Because if I had told her my secrets, she would have left thinking she had failed.”
Mo’Nique later joked to viewers that she wasn’t “totally” a lesbian. Explaining that she couldn’t say it “out loud” to her grandmother, she said she couldn’t open up to him.
John Washington Jr./Netflix
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“Do you know how hard it is to keep a secret? Secrets cause cancer,” he said. “… When you’re born with this, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Nothing. And please understand that I’ve tried.”
Mo’Nique has continued to hide her sexuality in the past and has admitted to having sex with “as many men as she can” because she doesn’t want to be treated “as if there’s something wrong” with her.
“I promised not to tell anyone, that I would take this to the grave. Because I saw how they treated the people in my family with that ‘illness’. Because they made us believe it was a ‘disease’, right?”
She eventually told her husband, Sidney Hicks, that she was “very scared” when she wanted to say she was afraid she would “get away from me.” It was the first time he’d been revealing this side of himself to someone out loud: “‘I want to be with another woman sexually,’ and he looked at me so beautifully, so patiently and so lovingly, and said, ‘Bitch, me too.'”
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Mo’Nique and his wife, Hicks, who is also his manager, married in 2006 and have twin sons at the age of 17.
The comedian previously shared it in an interview. Hollywood Reporter that he and Hicks “grow” from an open desire for marriage, with which they were previously intimate. “Life is starting to happen,” he told The Outlet. “I began to see a power I had never seen before. He loved me at my worst. I didn’t want to sacrifice that for a fuck. So I got out of it.”
Elsewhere in the Netflix special, Mo’Nique spoke of her “respect” for the LGBTQ community for being “free enough to be their goddamn selves” no matter what other people think or say.
The new Netflix comedy show comes after it finalized a racial and gender discrimination lawsuit against the steam production company, which accused the company of offering him less money than other male or White female comedians. Details of the settlement, including dollar amounts, were not disclosed.
My Name Is Mo’Nique is now streaming on Netflix.