When Damon Dash publicly confronted Lee Daniels at a Diana Ross concert last week over an alleged $2 million loan, you might have thought to yourself, “Mo’Nique was right.”
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Mo’Nique has accused the director, whom she worked with on Precious, of blackballing her after her Academy Award win, admonishing her for not “playing the game” of campaigning for her role during Oscar season. Her allegations that Daniels was unsavory and disloyal echoed in his latest encounter with Dash, who brought a camera crew to record his contentious conversation with the director.
Now, Daniels has commented on both relationships, saying they couldn’t be more different from each other.
Speaking to TMZ’s Raquel Harper in a video released this weekend, Daniels claims the money Dash gave him was an investment (Dash’s $5 million lawsuit claims otherwise).
“It was an investment, but I looked him in the eyes, and I told him that you would get your investment back,” Daniels told Harper. “This black man gave me money when nobody [would], not Disney, not Sony, not TriStar, not Paramount, not Warner Bros.”
Daniels vowed to pay back Dash’s investment, saying, “I’m going to work out something for him to get it because I am in a position now to get it to him.”
“I don’t know if I would be successful if it weren’t for him,” he added.
But his tune changed altogether on the subject of Mo’Nique, saying that the comedian and actress “needs to shut up.”
“People are confusing the Damon Dash [situation], with the Mo’Nique [situation]” he said.
Daniels stressed that he “fought hard for her” to get the role and that Mon’Nique was paid the money she was owed for the budget he had. But he called her criticism of him disrespectful, wrong, and “out of pocket.”
“I respect her [as an] actor because she gave me her soul. But I gave her my soul, and for that, she was given the Golden Globe and the Academy Award,” said Daniels, in a statement that could be construed as him trying to take credit for both her performance and her accolades.
That certainly appears to be how Harper took it.
“Black girl magic, at the time, which you gave her” she concurred.
“No one blackballed her. Mo’nique blackballed [herself] and for her to continue to talk about Oprah and myself and Tyler [Perry] is disrespectful,” he said, adding that the intimacy they experienced working together on set was like “making love without having sex.”
Dash has already responded to Daniels’ comments, sharing a copy of the video on his Instagram page with the caption, “We’re good bro. Appreciate the honesty.”
“Time to move forward. Let’s forget the bubble gum shit and get the money,” he added.
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