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After taking Netflix to court and ultimately securing her own stand-up special on the streaming service, actress and comedian Mo’Nique is not done using the legal system to get what she’s allegedly owed. Now, the Precious actress is suing Paramount and CBS for millions in profit participation from her show The Parkers, which also starred Countess Vaughn.
From Variety:
The show’s creators — Ralph Farquhar, Sara Finney-Johnson and Vida Spears — filed a similar lawsuit last June, alleging that CBS had engaged in various forms of “financial malfeasance” to artificially inflate expenses and suppress profit payments. The network settled that case out of court in November.
Mo’Nique, whose legal name is Monique Hicks, filed her own suit on Wednesday, repeating many of the claims in the show creators’ lawsuit.
The suit notes that the production company, Big Ticket Productions, and UPN were both owned by Viacom, and alleges that UPN was allowed to pay a below-market fee to distribute the show. The suit also suggests that the show was packaged for cable distribution at below-market rates, further depressing its profitability.
“While the Series has proven to be a major financial success for its producers and distributors, the series’ talent has not been permitted to share in the fruits of that success,” the suit claims, along with the assertion that Mo’Nique was supposed to receive 2.5% of adjusted gross receipts, but she didn’t.
The Parkers ran on UPN from 1999 through 2004, and it was one of a number of Black sitcoms in the ’90s and early 2000s that never really got the respect it deserved outside of Black viewers, much like the show it was a spinoff from, Moesha, which starred R&B legend Brandy.
Hopefully, Mo’Nique and all the other Black TV show producers and stars of that era get everything they’re owed out of an industry that has a history of mistreating Black creatives.
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