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Such down-home wit commanded the attention of talent execs at the Montreal comedy festival back in 1997; two years later, she'd landed her breakout role on ''The Parkers.'' ''Her weight was never an issue,'' says series cocreator Sara Finney-Johnson. ''The execs at UPN were just excited that this woman was actually funny.'' Indeed, Mo'Nique claims that refusing to shed a single pound ''did wonders for me.'' (So has that apostrophe, which isn't on her birth certificate: ''My mother had a problem with it...until she saw the first paycheck.'') ''I'm big. I'm bold. I'm fat -- that means 'fabulous and thick.' I'm plump. I'm whatever the f--- you want to call me. And when I put it out there, I take the power. People hate that.''
Like many comics, Mo'Nique uses humor as therapy. She's been divorced twice; her very rocky first marriage, to Shalon Watkins Sr., produced a son, Shalon Jr., now 12. ''I thought that I could fix [Shalon Sr.]. That's what I thought,'' she says. After leaving him, she turned their tumultuous relationship into fodder for her act. ''The stage allows me to release. I don't regret one second of that marriage. I had to go down that path to get [here].''
Her current path is jammed with projects. In addition to ''The Parkers,'' which is expected to be picked up for a fifth season, she's readying her second attempt at a talk show, which would run concurrently. (Her first effort stalled in development after Queen Latifah's show hit the air in 1999.) She holds the rights to Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel's story, which she hopes to bring to HBO or Showtime. She's got three more films in the works, including ''Beauty Shop,'' an indie she expects to shoot in June with ''The Bernie Mac Show'''s Kellita Smith. (The movie bears no relation to MGM's distaff version of ''Barbershop'' that's slated to star...Queen Latifah.) And the second ''Queens of Comedy'' tour kicks off May 8 in L.A., with Mo'Nique promising to spill the beans on her July 2001 split from second hubby Mark Jackson: ''I must tell America about that leprechaun!''
But first, some downtime -- or not. ''If I sat down and wrote out my schedule, I would go crazy,'' says Mo'Nique, who averages four hours of sleep a night. ''If people are still saying 'Oh, she's the one on that show, right?' then I've gotta bust my ass. I need to be a household name in their house. They need to see me and say, 'MO'NIQUE!'''
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