Mo’Nique Says Beef with D.L. Hughley Stemmed from Inappropriate Interview Question About Lee Daniels and Her Husband
Former NFL player-turned-talk show host Shannon Sharpe has kicked off 2024 with some of the most explosive guests on his “Club Shay Shay” podcast. Days after the new year started, he was joined by comedian Katt Williams, who dropped several bombshells about Kevin Hart, Earthquake, Faizon Love, and The Kings of Comedy. Now, one month later, Sharpe was joined by another fire-breathing comedian on the show.
On his episode with Academy Award winner Mo’Nique, which aired on Wednesday, Feb. 7, she discussed her relationship with Oprah Winfrey, lessons she tried to share with Taraji P. Henson about demanding fair pay, and the origins of her beef with the one “King of Comedy” who failed to catch a stray from Katt’s episode.
According to Mo’Nique, she and D.L. Hughley will never be cool until he takes accountability for the foul things he said to her, including greenlighting a game on his radio show with his staff. “The Queen of Comedy” was asked if she would rather her husband, Sidney Hicks, have protected sex with “Precious” director Lee Daniels or unprotected sex with video vixen, Karrine Steffans.
At the core of her violation is feeling like he attacked her family, though, to her, family is “sacred” and off limits.
Mo’Nique says she came to do a visit at his show when his co-host Jasmine posed the question during a session of “Would You Rather.” The Baltimore native was so infuriated with the question that she wanted to speak to Hughley, who at the time she considered her comedy “brother.”
“Listen, I just got off the phone with your team,” she said to Hughley. “And they wanted to play this game ‘Would You Rather’ and it was like stupid.”
After she explained why the game offended her, she claims Hughley responded, “Well, that’s how we do it.”
She countered, “Well, how does that uplift our community?” before asking, “I don’t know what y’all trying to insinuate but brother what you doing?”
“The Parkers” actress marked this as the starting point of their bad blood and revealed that the reason that the episode never aired is because she had her attorney send a cease-and-desist letter.
“I never knew D.L. Hugley had a problem with me,” Mo’Nique said until she started to notice that through the years he had nasty things to say about her and charged the viewers to find them.
“[He said] I was bitter. I was dangerous with what I was doing … my husband didn’t know what he was doing.’ This went on through the years,” she explained. “‘I was unloved.’ All of these things and I said to myself, ‘I’m a see you.’”
That would come true. During Memorial Day weekend in 2022, the two comics were booked to be on the same comedy stage at the Fox Theatre.
During her performance, Mo’Nique alleged that Hughley had her removed as the headliner of the bill and adamantly refused to hit the stage if she was the closer of the show that night.
Monique says D.L Hughley will call out everyone but won’t call out the name of the man who violated his daughter pic.twitter.com/wTiI2nwTNS
— Glock Topickz (@Glock_Topickz) June 3, 2022
She went on to the stage and blasted him, saying that he was made because she was supposed to be the headliner — according to her contract.
“That’s what the [expletive] contract says,” she continued. “Mo’Nique is to be the last [expletive] person on the [expletive] stage. She is the headliner. That’s what I signed the [contract for].”
As a rebuttal, Hughley posted his deal memo which was supposed to support his assertion that he was to be headliner. He then started to ignore his” Soul Plane” co-star friend, saying he didn’t know her when asked about the beef. He claimed he was too busy with life, his family, and his career to have “words or breath left for somebody like that.”
However, Mo’Nique was clear that she knows him and is not in a space to forgive him… until, in her own words, “he’s brave enough and courageous enough to say this is what really happened.”