First, Mo'Nique claimed she was "blackballed" from working in Hollywood for not "playing the game". Then, she appeared on Inside Edition to claim that she was suppose to originally play the role of Cookie Lyon on FOX's new hit, hip-hop drama, Empire.
According to Oscar- award winning star
for role in Precious,
Mo'Nique claimed she was "blackballed" by Hollywood for being
difficult to work with and her outrageous demands during the 2010 awards
season. She claimed that she had been "blackballed" by Lee
Daniels himself, the director of award winning movies such as Precious and The
Butler. Mo'Nique stated in an interview with Good Morning America that
the reason Daniels "blackballed" her was because "she didn’t thank the producers [at the Oscars]. She
didn’t thank the studio, and that’s just not things that you do.’ Well, it had
nothing to do with the producers, nor the studio. Mr Daniels had a problem that
I didn’t say his name the night of the Oscar awards.”
Recently, Mo'Nique had an interview
with Inside Edition to announce that she was allegedly suppose to play Cookie
Lyon on FOX's Empire.
She stated that Lee Daniels called her up to offer her the role and went
as far as to send her a script. She stated that the reason why she didn't get
to play Cookie was because FOX executives felt she was too tough to work with.
Interesting right?
Well according to Danny Strong,
co-creator and writer of Empire,
he stated the following in his interview with Vulture:
"Well, I don’t know if Lee Daniels had a conversation with Mo’Nique about
it that I don’t know about. I know that Lee and I were partners on this
project, and we discussed Mo’Nique once very briefly, and from my knowledge —
unless there was some conversation I never knew about — we never offered her
the part and she wasn’t going to be Cookie. We both think she’s incredibly
talented and genius, but we didn’t think she was right for the part. … It was
always Taraji."
You heard it from the "horse's mouth" itself; "It was always Taraji!". Don't get me wrong, Mo'Nique is a phenomenal woman, but Taraji was
born to play Cookie!!!!
CONVERSATION