Mo’Nique recently recalled the moment she told her husband she had fantasies “to be with another woman sexually.” During her Netflix comedy special, My Name is Mo’Nique, she revealed she finally opened up to Sidney Hicks, her husband since 2006, about her secret and claimed she kept it hidden due to family history.
She recalled how close she was with her late grandmother MiMi and felt living her truth would’ve tarnished their close relationship. According to Variety, the entertainer, née Monique Angela Hicks, noted that she felt “cowardly” when her grandma passed away because she never got to meet the real 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 f**king store knew that I was her grandchild, and I was her prize,” she remembers 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.”
“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.”
But meeting Sidney made her believe otherwise. She recounts telling her husband about her desires for the first time despite being frightened.
“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.”
“I must keep it a fantasy because I know me, and they would talk about me in the LGBTQ community,” she continued. “They would talk about me, and they would say that bitch fights for equality, but that bitch ain’t willing to give equality.”
My Name is Mo’Nique is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
Elsewhere, Mrs. Hicks recently linked up with Lee Daniels for BET+’s The Reading—their first collaboration in over a decade. Monique starred in the thriller drama, with Daniels serving as the project’s executive producer.
According to the official press release, the Courtney Glaudé-directed film follows “recently widowed Emma Leeden (played by Mo’Nique), who details the loss of her family in her new book Invasion. To generate press, Emma agrees to a staged reading by 19-year-old Sky Brown (played by Chastity Sereal) in Emma’s now fortified home. There’s only one problem, Sky’s spiritual connection is real, and evil emerges in a house they can’t get out of.”