Mo'Nique: Lee Daniels told me I've been 'blackballed'

theGRIO REPORT - Mo'Nique was surprised when offers didn't come flooding in after her 2010 Oscar win, but now she knows why...

Mo’Nique was surprised when offers didn’t come flooding in after her 2010 Oscar win, but now she knows why.

The actress won Best Supporting Actress for her role as an abusive mother in Precious, and despite the usual trend of Oscar winners being offered “more respect, choices, money,” Mo’Nique says offers for big parts in projects like The Butler and Empire “just went away.”

According to E! News, just a few months ago, Mo’Nique learned why, and she shared the reasons in an essay for the Feb. 27 issue of The Hollywood Reporter.

“But I got a phone call from Lee Daniels…And he said to me, ‘Mo’Nique, you’ve been blackballed.’ I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘Because you didn’t play the game,'” she says.

“I said, ‘Well, what game is that?'” she continues in her piece for The Hollywood Reporter. “He gave me no response.”

Mo’Nique’s 2010 Oscar win brought her even more attention when she famously refused to campaign for her Oscar and went on to say in her acceptance speech that she was grateful to the Academy “for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics.”

Lee Daniels has since given a statement about Mo’Nique’s claims to THR, saying:

Mo’Nique is a creative force to be reckoned with. Her demands through Precious were not always in line with the campaign. This soured her relationship with the Hollywood community. I consider her a friend. I have and will always think of her for parts that we can collaborate on, however the consensus among the creative teams and powers thus far were to go another way with these roles.

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