Queen Latifah’s career has blossomed since her first daytime talk show ended in 2001.
She’s been nominated for an Oscar (for her role as Mama Morton in “Chicago”), embarked on a successful movie trajectory and continued with her recording career, which launched her on the road to fame in the late 1980s.
She also watches a lot of TV — which helps explain, in part, her return to the small screen with her second talk show, “ The Queen Latifah Show,” premiering Monday (9 a.m./Ch. 2).
“I definitely felt a little bit of a void. I don’t know, there was a little heart missing in daytime TV,” Latifah, 43, told The Post. “I watch a lot of TV and I definitely watch talk shows and I felt like some of the ‘fun factor’ was missing, an entertainment factor, to a degree.
“If I were to jump in when everyone came at me initially [to host a daytime show] a couple of years ago, when Oprah announced her retirement, I would have been caught up in the melee of everyone throwing money at the wall and that wasn’t worth it for my life, my brand,” she said. “Now the time is right to do this show.”
Co-produced by Latifah’s Flavor Unit Entertainment, Sony TV and Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment, “The Queen Latifah Show” will go for a talk/variety mix.
“It won’t be a single-topic show like my last [talk show],” Latifah said. “It won’t be all over the place. I’m in a better place in my life do to this show than I was the last time.
“I still had a lot of acting I wanted to do back then and I wasn’t an A-list actor; big things happened after I left the show,” she said of her first daytime effort, which premiered in 1999.
“I want to do a show that’s really built around how happy a person I am,” she said.
“I knew we were in trouble [on the first show] when paternity shows started to rate. Did I really want to do that? No.
“The intention here is to be a fun, entertaining show, and if there’s a subject that comes across we can talk about it if one of our guests decides to talk about it,” she said. “We’re not going to act like [that topic] doesn’t exist. We’re not going to act like we live in a bubble.”
In addition to her pal Smith, Latifah called on another friend, musician Lenny Kravitz, to design the new show’s set.
“The set is gorgeous. Lenny is an amazing designer,” she said. “I like modern architecture — not anything old-style that looks clunky, like a 10-year-old talk show — I wanted a modern style that reminds me of an elevated house, and Lenny was able to design that.”
Latifah is asked what lesson’s she’s learned about daytime TV since the end of her first show. “The biggest lesson is for me to be myself,” she said. “I’m more comfortable in my own skin at 43 than I was back then. I’m in a better place in my life now.”