Mo’Nique Comes Out as Bisexual in Netflix Comedy Special
Mo'Nique recalls how seeing her grandmother struggle with accepting her gay 'Uncle Tina' led her to hide her sexuality for years.
Mo’Nique has come out as bisexual in her new Netflix comedy special, discussing her attraction to women.
The Oscar-winning actress, known best for Precious, The Queens of Comedy, and the TV sitcom The Parkers, broached the issue for the first time publicly in her standup special, My Name is Mo’Nique.
Near the end of the 72-minute special, the actress and comedienne recalls growing up in Baltimore and witnessing her grandmother Mimi’s troubled relationship with one of her children, fueled by Mimi’s religiosity and inability to accept that she had a gay daughter.
After slamming religion for “ripping apart motherf**king families,” Mo’Nique says that she remembers watching her “Uncle Tina” — who presented in a masculine manner — and Mimi “struggle” with each other, fueling her own fear about acknowledging her sexual orientation, as first reported by Autostraddle.
“And I felt cowardly when my grandmother left, because I couldn’t tell my grandmother who her granddaughter really was,” Mo’Nique says through tears. She kept her bisexuality a secret from Mimi.
“I adored how she adored me,” the comedian says. “I couldn’t tell my grandmother my secret thoughts. And my fantasies. ‘Cause I … did not want her to leave this earth thinking she was a failure. Because had I told her my secret thoughts, she would’ve left thinking she had failed.”
She recalls vowing never to disclose her sexual orientation and attraction to women to anyone else, and take the secret “to my grave” out of fear of being treated as if she had a “disease.”
She then jokes that she is not an “all the way” lesbian, admitting at one point in her life, she used to try to have sex with “as many” men as she could because he didn’t want to be treated “like something was wrong.”
“Do you know how hard it is to keep a secret? Secrets cause cancer,” Mo’Nique says at one point. “When you’re born with that, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Nothing. And please understand I tried.”
Mo’Nique says she was “so scared” when she wanted to tell her manager and husband, Sidney Hicks — the first time she disclosed her sexuality to anyone else — fearing Hicks, with whom she shares 17-year-old twin sons, would “walk away from me,” reports PEOPLE magazine.
But she then turns her personal pain and struggle into comedy.
“I said, ‘Daddy, I want to be with another woman sexually,’ And he looked at me, so beautifully and so patient and so loving, and he said, ‘B**ch, me too!'” she jokes.
The comedienne previously told The Hollywood Reporter that she “grew out of” the desire for an open marriage, which she and Hicks have previously been candid about.
“Life began to happen,” she said. “I began to see a strength I had never seen before. He loved me at my worst. I didn’t want to sacrifice that just for a lay. So I grew out of that.”
Mo’Nique also talks about her “respect” for the LGBTQ community in the special, praising them for being “free enough to be their goddamn self” regardless of what others think or say.
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