Sherri Shepherd

Sherri Evonne Shepherd (born April 22, 1967, in Chicago, Illinois) is an Emmy Award-winning actress, comedian, author, and television host — one of the rare performers who has conquered stand-up, sitcoms, daytime talk, game shows, Broadway, and film, and stayed beloved through all of it. Her career is a masterclass in being undeniable: funny, frank, hardworking, and impossible to ignore.

Shepherd was raised in the suburb of Hoffman Estates with her three sisters. A self-described class clown with show-business dreams, she was steered toward practicality by her father, a food service manager and church deacon — she attended trade college and spent years working as a legal secretary in Beverly Hills while doing stand-up on the side. In 1990 she began performing comedy; by 1995 she had quit the secretarial job to pursue it full-time, landing her first series-regular role that same year on The WB's Cleghorne!. Guest spots on The Jamie Foxx Show, Suddenly Susan, and Everybody Loves Raymond followed, and from 2002 to 2006 she starred as Ramona Platt on ABC's sitcom Less Than Perfect — her first long-running television home.

In 2007, everything changed: Shepherd became a permanent co-host of ABC's The View, daytime television's biggest table, and held the seat until 2014. She was at the center of the show's most electric era, holding her own alongside Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. In 2009 she made history as part of the first View team to win the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host. That same year, Time named the co-hosts to its "100 Most Influential People in the World" list, and Forbes ranked them among the "30 Most Influential Women in Media." During her View years she also starred in and executive-produced her own Lifetime sitcom, Sherri (2009), and wrote the humorous autobiography Permission Slips: Every Woman's Guide to Giving Herself a Break (2009).

As an actress, Shepherd's signature role is Angie Jordan on NBC's 30 Rock (2007–2013) — Tracy Jordan's formidable, no-nonsense wife, a character that let her go toe-to-toe with comedy's heaviest hitters and steal every scene she was in. She brought the same crackling energy to the big screen in Lee Daniels' Oscar-winning Precious (2009), and her film résumé includes Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), Think Like a Man (2012), Chris Rock's Top Five (2014), Ride Along 2 (2016), Guess Who, Beauty Shop, and Cellular. She has also hosted The Newlywed Game (2010–2013), Best Ever Trivia Show (2019), and Dish Nation, and competed on the 14th season of Dancing with the Stars.

Since 2022, Shepherd has headlined her own nationally syndicated daytime talk show, Sherri, which was renewed through 2025 and has earned her Daytime Emmy nominations, NAACP Image Award nominations — including a win for Outstanding Talk Series — and a People's Choice Awards nomination. She also co-hosts the podcast Two Funny Mamas, which has won multiple NAACP Image Awards. Her recent acting work includes roles on Max's The Sex Lives of College Girls and Prime Video's Harlem, and in 2026 she made Broadway history as the first woman to play the Genie in Disney's Aladdin. She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the Television category.

Through it all, Shepherd has been radically open about her life — motherhood, marriage, divorce, faith, weight loss — in a way that made daytime audiences feel they knew her personally, which is the whole trick of the job, and she does it better than almost anyone.

What sets Sherri Shepherd apart is the range. Few entertainers have genuinely succeeded as a stand-up comic, a sitcom lead, a dramatic film actress, a game-show host, a Broadway headliner, and a solo daytime talk-show star. She built each of those careers on the same foundation: a legal secretary from Chicago who refused to stop until the work spoke for itself. From the class clown of Hoffman Estates to the first woman to play the Genie on Broadway, Shepherd's story is the long game played perfectly — and she is still winning it.

Sherri Shepherd's career is a masterclass in being undeniable. She started in stand-up, broke through as a co-host on The View, and became one of the most recognizable faces on daytime television — funny, frank, and impossible to ignore. Then she did what daytime hosts rarely do: she became a real actress, stealing scenes on 30 Rock as Angie Jordan and holding her own in Precious.

Her own talk show, Sherri, cemented her as a solo headliner — the rare host who can do the celebrity interview, the comedy bit, and the genuine moment in the same segment. Through it all she's been open about her life in a way that made audiences feel like they knew her, which is the whole trick of the job, and she does it better than almost anyone.