Released in Theaters - April 7, 2006
Rated PG-13
About Mo’Nique (Jazmin Biltmore/Executive Producer)
Mo’Nique’s film credits include the features "Domino,"
"Shadowboxer," "Irish Jam," "Soul Plane," "Three
Strikes," Baby Boy" and "Two Can Play That Game," which earned her an
NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress. She was also featured in
the Showtime tele-film "Good Fences."
Her bold and sarcastic stand-up routine landed her a starring role in the hit stand-up
comedy film, "The Queens of Comedy," which also toured the country as a live
comedy concert and was released as an album which went on to earn a Grammy Award®
nomination for Best Spoken Comedy Album.
Mo’Nique’s starring role as Nikki Parker on the hit television series
"The Parkers" earned her numerous awards, including four NAACP Image Awards for
Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series and nominations for all five years of the
show’s run.
She first gained visibility and immense popularity with performances on HBO’s
"Def Comedy Jam," "Apollo Comedy Hour," HBO’s "Snaps"
and BET’s "Comic View." As the host of the nationally syndicated televised
program, "Showtime at the Apollo’" she made history as the first female
comedienne to serve in that capacity.
Upcoming projects for Mo’Nique include the first ever full-figured beauty pageant
for the Oxygen network.
Mo’Nique has become a role model for voluptuous women everywhere. Her musings on
life are featured in the New York Times bestseller, "Skinny Women are Evil."
About PHAT GIRLZ
Screenwriter Nnegest Likké had always wanted to create a story about plus-size women.
For her, they represented a segment of the movie going public that was usually being
lampooned by Hollywood when it wasn’t being completely ignored.
"All the stories out there were either spoofing plus-size people or making them
look like buffoons," says Likké. "I wanted to write a comedy, but not something
that made fun, or couldn’t be taken seriously in some ways."
Once Likké had her goal defined, she faced a new obstacle. "Unfortunately, I had
no actor," she says, "and I didn’t want anybody in a fat suit."
Then her mother introduced her to a 2001 DVD called THE QUEENS OF COMEDY and the brash,
bawdy comedy of Mo’Nique. The actress, who has had roles in the films DOMINO, SOUL
PLANE and BABY BOY, gained attention and praise for her portrayal of Nicole
"Nikki" Parker on the popular UPN comedy series "The Parkers" for five
years.
"When I saw Mo’Nique in the QUEENS OF COMEDY I knew I had found my vehicle so
I wrote the script with her in mind," says Likké. "I knew she would bring that
loveable, comedic, sexy sassiness to the table that I needed my main character to
have."
At the time, Likké was working—and earning good money—as a writer and
segment producer on a hit reality TV show. "During my hiatus, I decided I wasn’t
going back. After I saw Mo’Nique, I said, ‘I’m going to write this script,
and I’m just going to pray to God that I can find her, get her the script, and that
she’ll love it.’ Then she and I would go to the studios.
Likké’s spirit was indomitable. "I knew that if I wrote the script, and if I
could just get to her, this could happen," she says.
It would take three years, but Likké did write the script and eventually got it into
the star’s hands. But first, Likké needed a creative and financial backer. She met
with producer Bobby Newmyer, who has produced such films as TRAINING DAY and THE SANTA
CLAUSE films at the offices of his company, Outlaw Productions.
"It was incredible," Likké says reflecting on she and Newmyer’s first
meeting which lasted a whopping four hours. "We had an instant soul mate connection
and it was strangely beautiful. Who’d have thought this young, black woman from the
projects and this 48 year old, privileged, Jewish white man from Bel Air would have
anything in common?" she says. "We talked about everything in that meeting, even
about my father being from Ethiopia and my various trips to Africa, and then I found out
he was working on a project about Africa called THE LOST BOYS OF THE SUDAN. The
coincidences were overwhelming."
In another fortuitous coincidence, Newmyer and Likké discovered they had stumbled upon
Mo’Nique at the same time in the same way - by seeing her in THE QUEENS OF COMEDY -
and they both instantly fell in love with her and knew they wanted to do a project with
her. Likké immediately began writing the script PHAT GIRLZ and a year later, it
brought her and Newmyer together.
Newmyer then told Likké, he wanted to shoot PHAT GIRLZ on the then experimental
HD digital video instead of film (in order to cut the budget in half) and asked her if she
wanted to direct it.
"The best that I was hoping for at this meeting was that he’d say, ‘I
want to buy your script and I want to produce your movie,’ says Likké. "I was
shocked speechless when Bobby asked me to direct this film. It was the most surreal moment
of my life. My dream was always to direct one day. It was the beginning of an amazing
adventure."
The adventure continued when Mo’Nique got the script and fell in love with
it—not at lunch with her agent or at a meeting with her manager, but in her bathtub.
"When I first read the script, I was in my bathtub," the actress and comedian
admits. "I could not put it down. I was sold. I called Nnegest Likké that night and
I said, ‘Sister, I read your script. Sign me up. It is brilliant. Somebody finally
told the truth.’
With this movie, she hits the nail right on the head."
Perhaps the collaboration was destined to be, because Likké was in the shower when she
heard that Mo’Nique was signing on to star in the production of her first feature
screenplay.
"I didn’t know she had gotten the script," recalls Likké. "I was
in the shower, and the phone rang. My roommate said, ‘Mo’Nique’s on the
line.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know a Monique! Monique who!?’ I got on
the line, and I almost electrocuted myself because it was the real deal Mo’Nique from
the Queens of Comedy. She said, ‘Sista’, I read the script, and I loved it. Have
you been following me around?’"
The timing was uncanny—Mo’Nique had just returned from a trip to South
Africa. "There, and all over Africa, they love big women," says Likké.
"She said when she got there people were screaming at her on the street, ‘Marry
me! Marry me!’ They didn’t even know she was a celebrity. It was just because
she was plump, and full, and beautiful. And so the script was almost identical to what she
had just experienced."
The character of Jazmin Biltmore was one that Mo’Nique couldn’t pass up.
"Jazmin is outgoing, opinionated, aggressive, and very insecure when you first meet
her," explains Mo’Nique. "By the end of this movie, she’s outgoing,
opinionated, aggressive, and very secure."
"This character is always fighting with the world, screaming, ‘I’m here.
Accept me. I’m beautiful.’ But I also didn’t want to stray too far from
Mo’Nique’s sassy, sexy appeal," says Likké, explaining how she developed
the part of Jazmin. "I wanted to create a character who, by the end of the movie,
everybody would believe is as beautiful as what they perceive Halle Berry to be."
Likké also wanted to use the character of Jazmin to illustrate the challenges that
plus-size women face. "Being a plus size girl myself, it’s always been a real
challenge to find fashionable clothes," she says. "So the fashion aspect was
very important for me to feature in the movie. Who the heck can feel sexy in elastic
waisted pants or a muu-muu?"
This frank treatment of how it feels to be plus-size in a "minus size" world
was what attracted the outspoken Mo’Nique to the script.
"I so appreciated this script because it came from someone real. It came from
someone who’s walked the path," she says. "Nnegest wrote this story from
her heart, and it comes across. She wrote the words that every fat girl in this country
experiences—not just Mo’Nique and Jazmin, but Lisa, and Pam, and Kim, and
Michelle, and Rebecca…"
Like Likké, Mo’Nique is no fan of the "fat suit" some actors wear in
movies to portray overweight characters. "Normally when they do stories about fat
girls, they dress them up in a fat suit," she says. "That actress really
doesn’t get it, because at the end of the night when they say, ‘Cut,’ that
suit comes off. Our uniforms stay on permanently.
"It’s about time someone took a stand and said, ‘I’m fat, I’m
proud of it, we ain’t goin’ nowhere,’" she continues. "‘Deal
with it. If not, we’ll walk right over the top of you.’"
Both Mo’Nique and Nnegest Likké credit producer Bobby Newmyer with keeping the
faith on the often rocky journey to getting the film made. When investors balked, he
mortgaged his house and offered up his childrens’ education funds to come up with the
money. "He put EVERYTHING on the line to make this movie," says Likké.
"He believed in the project, he believed in Mo’Nique, and most incredibly he
believed in me - a first timer with no feature film experience who had barely even stepped
foot on a real movie set before. Nobody believed that Bobby would win. But he did.
He won the Gold for all of us."
Sadly, Newmyer died of a heart attack in December 2005 at the age of 49. "I honor
him. He put everything on the line. He put his family on the line for two fat black women
with no questions asked," says Mo’Nique. "When I see him on the other side,
he’s going to get a big hug from me."
