Mo’Nique assured the press backstage that everything she needed to say she’d already said when she accepted the Oscar for best supporting actress.
Reveling in the moment, she said, “I’m a stand-up comedian who just won an Oscar.”
But for the “Precious” actress, her win was bigger than her. In her acceptance speech, she acknowledged Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Academy Award, and backstage, Mo’Nique was still expressing her gratitude to those who came before her.
“The reason I am wearing this royal blue dress,” she said, “and this flower in my hair is because it’s what Hattie McDaniel wore when she won her Oscar.”
Mo’Nique had been accused of not working the awards season circuit as most others do, and she addressed those politics in her acceptance speech.
She added backstage that she’s so happy that the Academy didn’t play the game that the media wanted them to play and didn’t judge her on how many dinners she attended, but rather on her work and her performance.
Style experts, on the other hand, have been judging her on her copious amounts of leg hair. But hey, if all the actresses stopped shaving their legs and got a little more meat on their bones, they just may win Oscars too, Mo’Nique joked.
