Comedian and actor Mo’Nique opened up about her sexuality in her new Netflix standup special, My Name is Mo’Nique.
The Oscar-winning comedy veteran’s hour-long special was released last week on the streamer, and immediately made headlines for her tearful confessions about her sexuality and her description of her family’s reception to the news.
The 55-year-old Mo’Nique recounted the story of coming out to her husband, Sidney Hicks, recalling that she told him, “Daddy, I want to be with another woman, sexually.”
“And he looked at me, so beautifully and so patient and so loving, and said, ‘Bitch, me too!’” she continued, to the raucous laughter of the audience. “He said, ‘You find that bitch and we will fuck that bitch together!’”
Sadly, the former star of The Parkers didn’t come out to some of her other family members for fear that they would reject her. Mo’Nique shared the story of her “Uncle” Tina, whom she described as having a “full beard,” wearing something to “smash her breasts down” and putting “something in her pants to make it look like she could possibly have a dick.”
“Everything about my Uncle Tina is a man,” she said. “So for you babies in the LGBTQ+ community, I want y’all to hear me. I respect every-motherfuckin’-body in here free enough to be their goddamn selves.”
But watching the distant relationship between her grandmother and her Uncle Tina made Mo’Nique feel as though she couldn’t share her sexuality with her grandmother, which she never did before she died.
“I couldn’t tell my grandmother my secret thoughts and my fantasies because I didn’t want her to love me privately,” she said, “and I did not want her to leave this earth thinking that she was a failure.”
Breaking the moment up with some levity, Mo’Nique acknowledged that the audience was likely asking themselves, “Are you a motherfucking dyke?”
“No I’m not — all the way,” she explained. “But when you’re born with that, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Nothing. And please understand that I tried.”
In a separate interview with Vulture, the comedian was asked why she was inspired to open up about “generational cycles of trauma” created around same-sex attraction in “churchgoing families.”
“I think that introduces you to me,” Mo’Nique responded, adding that she also found out that she is “not unique.” “A woman in China can take a piece of this special and say, ‘I relate to that,’” she said.
Mo’nique added, “What made me do it… it’s just time. It is time for us to live in freedom.”
“Once you get to a place of freedom, you truly start living,” she said.
Congrats to Mo’Nique, and welcome to the family.
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