Sheryl Lee Ralph on Almost Starring in Ghosts Over Abbott Elementary

There are two ways to earn your spot on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, according to Sheryl Lee Ralph.

“If I have the honor of a star, anybody can — if it’s something you’re really willing to put the work in for or if you have a sugar daddy or a sugar mama who just wants to give it to you. But —” the newest inductee pauses for laughter, always one for theatrics, “it probably won’t be that. More than likely, you’re going to have to do some work.”

Thankfully, she has a playbook for that too. Ralph is now best known for her Emmy-winning role as Barbara Howard in the ABC sitcom “Abbott Elementary,” produced by Warner Bros. Television. But she first stepped onto the famed lot nearly 50 years ago, auditioning to play a different Barbara H. in what she hoped would be her first professional acting gig: the 1977 heist comedy film “A Piece of the Action,” directed by Sidney Poitier.

Upon arriving, though, Ralph realized Poitier’s daughter Pamela was also vying to play juvenile delinquent Barbara Hanley. Ralph quickly made peace with her impending rejection; at least she would get to meet one of the most important Black artists of all time first.

“I ended up with an incredible friendship with Pamela Poitier,” Ralph says. “I saw her about two years ago. She said, ‘Sheryl, you stole my career.’” Because, nepotism be damned, Ralph got the role, and Poitier remained her mentor from the 1970s until his death in 2022. When asked if they ever discussed why he cast her over his own child, Ralph keeps it simple: “Because I was the best. That was it. I was the best.”

“[He taught me] to know my value, and to know that the industry wouldn’t be as kind as he had hoped it would be,” Ralph says. “He tried to always arm me with — you could tell he was a great ‘girl dad’ — strength and understanding that it doesn’t matter if people don’t support you.”

It didn’t take long for Ralph to learn how true that was. In 1980, she was cast in a production of “Swing!” that was bound for the Kennedy Opera Center. “It was all about jazz meets downtown. Uptown were the Black kids; downtown were the white kids,” she says. “We rehearse this show, and it’s obvious to me that the guy that’s partnered with me has a problem.”

Ralph continues: “I say to Mr. Stuart Ostrow, our big-time producer-director, ‘Sir, I can’t help him, because he won’t do the work. That man turned to me and said, ‘Sheryl Lee Ralph, I am producing and directing a big Broadway smash.’” The musical didn’t make it to Broadway until nearly 20 years later — and with a different director — but that didn’t stop Ostrow from dishing it out: “‘If you cannot figure it out, I will find someone who can.’”

Ralph swallowed her concerns until the show opened at the DuPont Theater in Wilmington, Del., to negative reviews. “We woke up the next morning and the company had left all the Black kids. All four of us,” she says. “They left us at the hotel with a note, mind you, that said we no longer fit into the trajectory of the story. So, they went to the Kennedy Center without us. And I cried the ugly Oprah cry.”

But mid-sob, she got her chance to beat Ostrow to Broadway. “My friend calls me on the phone, and I’m crying, and Jeffrey says —” Ralphs puts on a Jamaican accent — “’Sheryl, stop the crying. I need you to get on the first plane, train or bus to New York.’” A new musical called “Reggae” was opening in less than two weeks, and it was in need of a new star. “There had been a Jamaican beauty queen in the lead. She couldn’t act, she couldn’t sing, and they fired her.”

Days later, while still learning the lines, Ralph was making her Broadway debut at the Biltmore Theater in a role that paid homage to the country her mother was from.

“Now, was it a big hit? It opened the day of a garbage strike, and probably closed the day of a newspaper strike,” Ralph says. “Reggae” ran for only 21 performances over 16 days. On closing night, as Ralph recalls, the 650-seat theater only had five people in the audience.

But one of the five was a playwright named Tom Eyen, who went backstage afterword and told her, “The show is terrible; you are not.” He handed her a note with an address on it: “Be here on Monday at 10 o’clock.”

On that day in 1981, Ralph found herself at a rehearsal singing, oddly, “Ave Maria.” It was a mistake. “They asked me to sing something from church, and I think they thought that I might have been a Southern Baptist,” she says, still sounding peeved at the assumption that she would pull out a gospel tune. “Little did they know I’m a sweet Episcopalian. Damn near Catholic!”

The room fell silent. Ralph fled in anger. And still, that audition landed her the role that truly launched her career: Deena Jones in “Dreamgirls.”

There were bumps along the way — “Quincy Jones walked out on the show. He didn’t get it. But then, he didn’t get Madonna either,” Ralph says, laughing. But “Dreamgirls” was a hit, and Ralph was finally earning real recognition. She was nominated for a Tony and a Drama Desk Award and remained with the show until she saw the signs that there was more out there for her to try.

“Almost three years go by, and I’m tired,” she recalls. “One day, I just forget all my lines of a song. One night only, but I knew it was time to go — then I got a call.” It was Tim Flack, a well-known casting director and producer. “He says, ‘If you are here on Monday morning, you’re going to be on TV.’”

Flack connected her to the producers of “V: The Series,” an NBC sci-fi drama. “They asked me if I would cut my hair off, and if I was willing to do something very different from ‘Dreamgirls.’ I cut that hair off so fast,” Ralph says. “And now I’m starting to see this little pattern taking place.”

In other words, she realized that she was a bona fide working actor who could reliably expect to remain employed as long as she kept putting herself out there.

Ralph moved to L.A. and began booking gig after gig. There were critical darlings, like Charles Burnett’s “To Sleep With Anger,” which won her an Indie Spirit Award in 1990, and broad-appeal comedies, like “Sister Act 2.” There were many TV roles; among them, the breakout was “Moesha,” the six-season UPN sitcom that starred a teenage Brandy in the title role. Ralph played Dee Mitchell, mainly remembered as Moesha’s stepmother, but she was also the high school vice principal — which Ralph looks back on as a full-circle moment now that she’s famous for playing an educator once again.

Quinta Brunson, the creator and star of “Abbott Elementary,” first landed on Ralph’s radar in 2018. Ralph was shooting the CBS sitcom “Fam” on the Warner Bros. lot; during a walk with her daughter, they spotted Brunson. Brunson was co-producing a pilot with Larry Wilmore and Jermaine Fowler, which never made it to air, but she was already becoming a buzzy name in Hollywood for various viral videos.

“My daughter stops in her tracks,” Ralph recalls. “She says, ‘Mom, that’s Quinta Brunson. You have to meet her, because she’s gonna be somebody.” The next year, Ralph guest starred in HBO’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show.”

“I feel like she’s studying me,” Ralph says of Brunson, who was a writer and cast member on the series. “And then, before I know it, this girl is dancing. She’s singing. She’s doing cartwheels — all a part of this big improv thing we’re doing. I’m like, ‘Who is this tiny ball of energy?’”

Time passed, and “Fam” was canceled.Two of the writer-producers, Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, wanted Ralph to play a role on a new CBS comedy they were creating, but it had been years since Ralph’s last
big role. “I love the Joes, but I’m going to be number five or six [on the call sheet]. Where do I want to go in my career?” she remembers thinking. “I want to move up. I want to be No. 1 or No. 2.” Instead, she took a role on an ABC pilot called “Harlem’s Kitchen,” on which she’d be second to Delroy Lindo. The day before they were set to shoot, COVID-19 shut down the city, and after months, the show was killed. Ralph was devastated. “And what show gets a pickup? ‘Ghosts.’”

Wiseman and Port had been offering her the role that eventually went to Danielle Pinnock in “Ghosts,” which debuted as the most-watched new comedy of the 2021-2022 season.

“I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t play it right. I made the wrong choice. It’s lipstick and lashes under the bridge now, girl. Somebody else has that role — somebody who’s very talented and perfectly cast. I’m sitting there, looking out the window and thinking about what’s next, and I get a call. ‘Ms. Ralph?,’” she says.

It was Brunson. Four seasons, an Emmy and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame later, the rest is history.

“I am very fortunate, because I have something that I don’t think a lot of performers get and that is the appreciation and the respect of your audience,” Ralph says. “I just came back from a 20-hour trip, and the pilots came out and said, ‘We love you. Would you take a picture with us?’ I was like, ‘These are guys, and the Black guy didn’t even have to tell the white guy who I was!’ Walking through the airport, people are like, ‘Hello, queen. Hope you have a good flight.’ They pass me notes. Like, what in the whole wide world? Does it get much better than this?”

Ralph pauses to consider that question. “OK, yeah, I could win an Oscar,” she concedes. “But I don’t know if it would be any better. I feel good. I feel happy. I’m loving it.”