Getty ImagesSo Mo'Nique's rumored reputation for being "difficult" hasn't preceded her everywhere.
Asked about the splash her co-star made in The Hollywood Reporter this week, Tika Sumpter—who worked with Mo'Nique on the upcoming HBO biopic Bessie, about jazz singer Bessie Smith—didn't bat an eye, exclusively telling E! News that what she does know is that her pal "kills it" in the cable movie.
Mo'Nique plays pioneering blues singer Ma Rainey, while Queen Latifah is the titular star.
"She is going to be able to show everybody a whole other side 'cause she is playing a real life jazz, blues artist—the first lady of blues!" Sumpter raved when we caught up with her at the 2015 Essence Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon. "So I am excited for people to see that it's just like show and tell—and then everybody can go on from there and make their decision about her."
Mo'Nique, who hasn't racked up as many acting credits as once might have assumed she would have after winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2010 for Precious, said in an interview with THR that Lee Daniels told her a few months ago that she had been "blackballed" because she "didn't play the game."
Daniels directed her in Precious and, according to Mo'Nique, he offered her roles in The Butler and the Fox series Empire, but nothing ever panned out.
"There have been people that have said, 'Mo'Nique, she can be difficult. Mo'Nique and her husband can be difficult.' They could probably be right," the actress told THR. "One of the networks said to [Lee] that I was 'really difficult to work with.' And I said, 'Well, that's funny, because I've never even worked with them, but OK.'"
But it sounds as though Tika Sumpter, whose major TV credits include The Game, Gossip Girl and The Haves and the Have Nots, isn't in the "difficult" camp.
"She is the sweetest soul ever and the most and the more encouraging person ever," she gushed about Mo'Nique. "I just look up to her as an actress. She has an Oscar—many of us don't have that! I think that's a powerful thing!"
Mo'Nique herself told THR that, yes, winning an Oscar "should come with more respect, more choices and more money. It should, and it normally does."
Asked if she believed that Mo'Nique still has a great career in her future, Sumpter gave an emphatic, "Yes!"
"She is not 99 years old," the actress said. "She has a whole life ahead of her and she has so much more to do, and that's the exciting part about this whole business! You can be down today and up tomorrow!"
Cheers to that!