TALKIN' BACK....Mo'Nique REVEALS She Was Paid $50K For "Precious", SAYS She Declined Bad Roles & Requests To "Work" For Free

Mo'Nique appeared on CNN to respond to comments made by Lee Daniels about her "demands" and not playing the Hollywood game.  Watch what she had to say last night about being compensated for her work inside...

She was gone for a minute, and now she's back with LOTS to say.  No shade....Mo'Nique has really parlayed this whole "blackballed" thing into some major Hollywood headline clips.  Following her explosive revelations in "THR" about getting blackballed, she's become the talk of Tinsletown...which works out nicely with promo for the new movie Blackbird that she's produced and financed.

Following Lee Daniels' appearance on CNN this week where he hinted at her placing difficult "demands" on the studio, Mo'Nique sat down for an interview with Don Lemon where she made a few clarifications. 

First off....she only got $50K for the Oscar nominated film Precious. So when the studio asked her to fly to the Cannes Film Festival to do promotions (at her own expense) her manager-husband declined.  Twice.  The third time the studio asked, he wanted to know if there was a "number" attached. They said no.  Basically...they paid her $50K, then wanted her to fly herself across the world and do more work...for free.  That's the Hollywood game?  Oh.  They could have AT LEAST paid for travel accomodations.

Here's the highlights:

She wasn't blackballed, she was LOW balled:  “It wasn’t that I was blackballed like Mr. Daniels said… the phone was ringing and the scripts were coming but the offers that were associated with them made me say ‘I can’t accept that...If we continue to accept these low offers, how do we make a change?”

On "responding" to Lee Daniels "demands" comment:  "It shocked me… I was yelling at the screen, ‘Don, please ask him what the demands were!'” There were no demands, there was a request from the movie studio that I fly to France for the Cannes Film Festival. I simply said, ‘I respectfully decline....I had a couple of days downtime and I wanted to spend that with my husband and my kids."

On doing "free" promo for the film: “It really wasn’t about the money and I am not complaining because I signed up to do it [“Precious”] with my friend [Daniels]. When the movie studio said we can’t pay you to do this, we didn’t have a problem with that.”