Mo’Nique has filed a lawsuit against Paramount and CBS on Wednesday (Apr 12) for unpaid royalties from her sitcom “The Parkers.” The breach-of-contract lawsuit alleges that the defendants artificially suppressed the show’s profitability, resulting in Mo’Nique’s production company not receiving the full amount of royalties contractually due.
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The suit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by Hicks Media, the production company Mo’Nique owns with her husband and business partner, Sidney Hicks. Defendants named in the lawsuit include CBS Studios, Paramount Pictures, and the show’s production company Big Ticket Productions. The suit seeks monetary damages that will be determined at trial.
The suit says the series’ creators and writers have been similarly underpaid, and that Mo’Nique learned of the alleged breach of contract when they recently filed a similar lawsuit.
“I just want the contractual compensation that I’ve earned,” Mo’Nique said in a statement.
“The Parkers,” which aired from 1999 to 2004, was a spinoff of the sitcom “Moesha” and starred Mo’Nique as Nikki Parker, a mother who returns to the same college her daughter is attending. The show ran for five seasons and 110 episodes on the now-defunct network UPN, a forerunner of The CW.
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Despite its success, Mo’Nique claims that the show’s creators, writers, and talent were underpaid and have not been allowed to share in the show’s financial success. Since its original run, “The Parkers” has been rerun in syndication in various forms and has been available for streaming on Netflix since 2020.
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