In her latest comedy special entitled “My Name is Mo’Nique,” which premiered on Netflix on April 4, Mo’Nique tearfully recounts a confession she made to her husband Sidney Hicks. In the special, she tells the story of admitting to Hicks for the first time that she wanted “to be with another woman sexually.”
The Academy Award winner, who’s been married to Hicks since 2006, reveals she had kept her desires a secret for most of her life out of fear, due to her family history. As she nears the end of her set in “My Name is Mo’Nique,” she spends a portion of the special remembering the relationship between her grandmother MiMi and a queer family member whom she affectionally refers to as “Uncle Tina,” reflecting on the distant relationship the two had due to Tina’s sexuality.
Mo’Nique begins the story noting that she felt “cowardly” after her grandmother died, because she hadn’t shared who she really was with her.
“I adored how she adored me. When we would walk into the store, if I was on a magazine cover, she made sure everybody in that fucking store knew that I was her grandchild, and I was her prize,” Mo’Nique says in the special. “So I couldn’t tell my grandmother my secret thoughts and my fantasies because I didn’t want her to love me privately, and I did not want her to leave this Earth thinking that she was a failure.”
She adds: “But I kept that secret, and I promised myself I wouldn’t ever tell anyone that. I would take that to my grave, because I saw how they treated the people in my family with that disease — because they made us believe it was a disease.”
However, that changed when she met her third husband Sidney Hicks, she tells the crowd. Despite being scared, Mo’Nique reveals that she felt she needed to tell her husband her long-running fantasy.
“I’m so scared, because I’m saying, ‘Please, when I tell you, don’t walk away from me — because it’ll take my breath away. But I gotta tell you, because you know me, you know when something ain’t right?’ And something hadn’t been right for years. But because I’m a celebrity, a star, I could mask it. I could mask it with my pretty things. But that night, the mask had to come off,” she says, before sharing her secret which he “beautifully” received with a playful joke.
She makes light of it all, adding a lewd joke: “I must keep it a fantasy, because I know me, and they would talk about me in the LGBTQ community. They would talk about me, and they would say that bitch fights for equality, but that bitch ain’t willing to give equality.”
Also in the special, Mo’Nique talks about her experience growing up in Baltimore and going through special education, as well as her first lessons about men. She’ll next be seen in the upcoming Netflix film “The Deliverance” from Lee Daniels.
Sidney Hicks and Monique Hicks executive produced the standup special, which was directed by L. Frazier.
“My Name is Mo’Nique” is currently available for streaming on Netflix.