Mo' Mo

As promised, I dug through my transcripts and found all that Mo'Nique had to say about some other folks winning an Oscar, back in 2002. At the time, there was a lot of chatter goin' around that Denzil and Halle had both been awarded their Academy Awards as some kind of conspiracy within the Academy to recognize "black actors." And there was chitchat within the black community that they only got them for playing bad characters. Mo' got right into it, "Nothing was given! Nothing! They earned those Oscars. Nobody did them a favor!" She went on to say that Denzil played a bad cop, but he played the hell out of that bad cop "I believed him!! I believed him!! And that nobody should say anything about Halle's character either. "You don't have to like the people they played, but you have to respect how well they played them!" Ok, now. So if you flash forward to 2010 and all the negatives that folks have been saying about the character that Mo' played. It was hard to watch, no doubt she was a monster in a mother suit, but there was no conspiracy within the Academy this year, either. Mo' leaned into it and played it like she was born to it. People believed she was that character--just like she believed Denzil was that bad cop. And like she said about the other people in 2002, Mo' earned it and I can always say, I know somebody that got cursed out (but at least didn't get beat up) while on the set by a future Academy Award winner and that would be Ruth Adkins Robinson.

Mo'Nique Talking Hard

It's funny how, er, stars line up. Back in 2002, eight years ago or so, I was writing and producing a show called "Oscar's Black Odyssey: From Hattie to Halle," and I asked Mo'Nique to come and be interviewed about what Oscar means, who has won the Golden Man, who hasn't, why they haven't, who should have at least been nominated and who has not. And while nobody in their wildest dreams ever thought she was going to ever get an Oscar worthy role (yeah, I don't care what she said in all those interviews, she didn't think it back then anyway). She had something to say which I found really interesting and she made it into the final cut. So tonight I'm going to look at the show and read the transcript of the interview and see if she was lining up the stars way back when. Stay tuned. This fascinates Ruth Adkins Robinson.