Mo’Nique had a few words for Steve Harvey amid the controversy that broke out between Katt Williams and the male MC

“What’s done in the dark shall come to light.”

Mo’Nique recalled the famous proverb during our interview when I asked about her issues with Black Hollywood’s titans, including Steve Harvey.

In a viral interview with Shannon Sharpe on the “Club Shay Shay” podcast, Katt Williams claimed Harvey stole much of his comedy routine from other comedians — most notably Mark Curry .

Katt Williams Unleashed | CLUB SHAY SHAY

While Mo’Nique would not comment directly on the comments Williams made about Harvey, she had her own comments about the “Family Feud” host.

“That is my brother, but we know the ones who have gotten caught up in this industry and feel like ‘I can say and do what I want to say’ and you’re not supposed to say anything back to that.”

Harvey and Mo’Nique’s personal tension with each other got heated during her appearance on the “Steve Harvey” talk show in 2020. Part of that tension, she said, came from Harvey preventing her from revealing what happened during the interest meeting for her potential talk show.

Mo’Nique and Steve Get Real: Part 1

“When Steve Harvey sat on that show, and he said, ‘Mo, your husband can’t be out here flexing like he do. He can’t be who he is when he come out here.’ Let me tell you what that meant.”

At that time, she and her husband/manager Sidney Hicks were negotiating a potential talk show to be produced by the same presumed producers behind “The Steve Harvey Show.” A meeting they took shortly before that interview didn’t go well.

Mo’Nique said the producers started to tell she and Hicks how much they paid Harvey, but Hicks stopped them.

“My husband said, ‘Number one, my wife considers that man her brother, and number two, he’s my frat brother and we don’t play like that,’” Mo’Nique said. “’Please don’t share that man’s business with us because if you share his business with us, you’ll share our business with someone else.’”

When the contents of that meeting were revealed to Harvey, Mo’Nique said his response to the producers was, “‘Man sometimes my frat brothers can be a little fanatical man, that ain’t nothing, I’ll take care of it.’” (Harvey and Hicks are both members of Omega Psi Phi, Inc.)

Hicks added that Harvey admitted to him that he screened the number of Black people in the audience of his show because Harvey worried that too many of them on camera might lose him sponsors. “I’m not going to let these n****s mess it up for me,” Hicks said Harvey told him.

We reached out to Harvey’s agency WME to corroborate Mo’Nique’s and Hicks’ statements and did not receive a response. But their claims about Harvey mirror jokes the comedian has made in the past — particularly, a routine in which he insists that “for $4 million, I’ll be all the muthaf***in’ monkey you can stand.”

“Black people’ll be so embarrassed by my muthaf***in’ performance,” he said.

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“We just again want to say, Brother you’re our family, recognize that and come on back, let’s do it the right way,” Hicks said of Harvey. “It’s not going to work out in the long run when you’re doing things for people that really are oppressing you and it’s just for money.”

These days, there’s no interview, negotiation, or deal for Mo’Nique without Hicks being present. Hicks is often blamed for her difficulties in the industry, but Mo’Nique said her most successful deals, lucrative films and important moves have been achieved with her manager at the helm.

“The Deliverance,” Mo’Nique’s latest project with Lee Daniels, has an as-yet-unscheduled release date. She stars opposite Glenn Close, Aunjanue Ellis, Tasha Smith, Omar Epps, and Andra Day.