If a single word could be used to describe Sheryl Lee Ralph, it would be effervescent. She’s vibrant, radiating a positive, infectious energy that translates across every platform that’s lucky to have her—not the other way around.
When we meet on Zoom, Ralph is as animated and gracious as she was when she ascended the Emmys stage to accept her award for best supporting actress in a comedy in 2022, bringing the house down with a rousing speech about the art of chasing a dream, no matter the obstacles. Though she’s recovering from a respiratory illness when we talk, she’s still the picture of good health: laughing loudly, breaking out in song when the mood strikes, and telling sometimes-heavy stories about her life and career without a hint of sadness or regret. She’s alive, gratefully so—and, as long as she is drawing breath into her lungs, she knows she has more to offer to herself, to her community, and to the world.
In a society that often expects women to seek eternal youth, Ralph, now a proud 67 years old, has seemingly mastered the art of aging authentically. In fact, she’s embracing getting older with as much fervor as she’s embraced every transition in her life: “You have a choice. You can live or you can die,” she tells me with laughter in her voice. “I mean, is there anything in between?”
The confidence that oozes from Ralph’s pores—whether she’s playing educator Barbara Howard on ABC’s hit show Abbott Elementary, now in its third season, or sitting opposite Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday—is well-earned and unshakable. During a career that’s spanned nearly five decades, taking her from Hollywood to Broadway and back again, Ralph says she has encountered racism, sexism, loss, and a lack of opportunities. (She says Robert De Niro once told her, “You’re a damn great actress, and that is too bad because Hollywood is not looking for you, so you better wave that red flag and let them know you’re there.”) Though she didn’t have the easiest path, she was sustained by her belief in herself and her commitment to her craft. “I think about what it takes to carry on when everybody’s telling you, ‘You should quit. There’s not a whole lot of room for you’” she says. “But guess what? If there’s no room for you, you gotta build your own house.”
“It can be difficult, but I’ve maintained and”—here she breaks into song—“On my momma / On my hood / I look fly / I look good.”
Ralph’s presence, on Abbott and in real life, is equal parts elder stateswoman and preacher. During our conversation, she offers up a sermon about self-love, self-worth, and staying the course, no matter how old you are. It’s a lesson she learned as a child growing up in Hempstead, Long Island, from her parents—her mother immigrated to the US from Jamaica and married her father, an American-born college professor—who exposed her to the beauty of the Black diaspora from an early age.
Those experiences have greatly shaped her perspective, especially as she gets older. “When people would tell kids in school, especially Black kids, what they could and couldn’t do, I was so aware that these people didn’t know what they were talking about because I had already seen all of the Black doctors, all of the Black ministers, all of the Black teachers, and people who owned and ran their own schools,” she says. “I’d seen all of the Black and Black-ish politicians, people who were doing it. I was seeing Black people in seats of power, running things, making things happen.”
Ralph describes herself as “a child of racism at its finest in the '60s” and, during our conversation, touches on a number of historical events—the Tulsa Race Massacre and Hurricane Katrina—as well as recent movies, including Killers of the Flower Moon and American Fiction, that reveal how the deck is stacked against Black people.
Every time there seems to be some progress, the game changes again—and that’s no accident. “And you’re not even winning,” Ralph reminds me. “You’re just getting one step ahead.” And though being in a “crooked room,” as scholar Melissa Harris-Perry describes it, is difficult to navigate, Ralph has always used her strong sense of self as her North Star.
“We’re in a world that continues to tell you that you are not worth it,” she says. “So my whole thing is letting everybody know you are worth it—especially if you look like me, you are definitely worth it, because you have come through unimaginable pain and hurt. And look at you: still glowing, still raising up a flag of magic.”
Depending on the era you grew up in, Ralph’s career might have a different meaning. When I told my father, who’s in his 60s, that I would be speaking with her, he lit up, remembering seeing her on screen for the first time in the 1977 film A Piece of the Action. If you’re a millennial, particularly a Black girl who came of age in the ’90s and 2000s, your first memory of Ralph may be her playing Dee Mitchell on the culture-defining series Moesha, which aired on UPN from 1996 to 2001.
As the stepmother to Moesha (a role played by our first Black princess, Brandy) and a high school vice principal, Ralph’s Dee was a stable presence. Whether she was arguing with her stepdaughter about having a boy in the house or talking to the teen about whether she was ready to have sex, Dee was our TV mom—my TV mom—and when Ralph departed the show after season five, her absence was noticeable.
Looking back, Ralph loves the role she played in making the series a cultural touchstone for millions of Black kids. “Moesha was a very joyful, uplifting show about a young Black girl’s journey into womanhood, her family, her community, her diary, and what she was learning about life,” Ralph says. “I look at some of the work that I was able to do on that show, and I am very proud.” As the sitcom reaches a new generation thanks to streaming services, its message is just as resonant.
Ralph has long believed in the transformative power of the arts and used her fame to connect with and uplift her community. In 1990 she founded the DIVA Foundation to raise awareness about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which claimed the lives of many of her friends. At the time, the disease was largely viewed as something that only affected gay men—and specifically white gay men—but Ralph knew that wasn’t the full story. “From day one, I had always seen Black folks in the mix of this, but the money wasn’t following the disease,” she says. “Black folks weren’t getting care. They weren’t getting help. And I said, ‘We have to raise our voice.’” The DIVA Foundation became a way for Ralph to honor her friends while using her celebrity to fight stigma and achieve better health outcomes for everyone.
Ralph believes in using her platform to “convey messages of importance to the people,” she says. “The fact that I get accolades or have some sort of celebrity makes it easier to hear the message,” she continues. “I think I’m much more of a messenger than I am just an actor or an artist.”
In 2006, Ralph wrote and starred in Sometimes I Cry, a one-woman show that includes monologues from many women she’s met through her advocacy work. In 2023, Ralph partnered with HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations to produce Unexpected, a documentary that began airing on Hulu on December 1 (World AIDS Day). The film follows Masonia Traylor and Ciara Ci Ci Covin, two Black women with HIV, as they assist other Black women who’ve been diagnosed.
While Ralph doesn’t seem to mind pouring so much energy into her advocacy work, she also tries to tend to her own needs, something that often eludes Black women who have been expected—historically and in our current moment—to put everything and everyone before ourselves. When I ask her how she puts herself first, especially at this stage in her career, she starts by offering an important lesson about the burdens Black women carry: “They were forced upon landing here to take care of everybody at great sacrifice, meaning their own family was not their own family,” she says. “Their family was born and bred to be sold. And this has been a generational curse of sorts, to have your family ripped away from you. I don’t think anybody ever takes that into full consideration when they talk about the plight of Black women.”
Ralph is committed to breaking that cycle. Right now that looks like prioritizing herself when she’s not on set or working on various projects. “I’m the laziest girl in town,” she says. “When I realized that for the past two and a half weeks, I have been up at four every morning, and I'm in just about every scene, and then I come home tired just to start all over again…I’m not doing a doggone thing. Nothing but breathing deeply. That’s it.” It’s a rebuke of the expectation that women, and especially Black women, should always be toiling, or at least just working in service of others. Sometimes, the best thing we can do for ourselves is rest.
Legacy—the very idea that long after our physical bodies are gone, our works persist—is something Ralph is thinking about as she nears 70. “I think legacy is always an active thought to do the best that I can, to leave the best of myself when I’m gone,” she says.
Her husband of nearly 20 years, Pennsylvania state senator Vincent Hughes, who she calls a “servant of the people, not just a politician,” encourages her to pursue her goals without losing sight of herself. “It has been an amazing thing to have a partner to live life with and be all right with it, however you’re living.”
While she knows she’ll be remembered for her acting and her activism, she’s also proud of the two kids she’s raised—Etienne and Ivy Coco Maurice—and the work they are doing in the world. “My children are part of my best legacy,” she says. “You know, in some places in Africa, they don’t ask you how you are. They ask you, ‘How are your children?’”
She credits her kids with helping her reinvent herself as an actor and as a woman over the years: “They always say, ‘Children keep you young.’ If you’re open to it, they absolutely do.” She describes Etienne and Ivy Coco as “big health and wellness people” who inspire her to take good care of herself. “I’m floored by the way they’re just living their lives to their fullness—and in a way that’s not just for them but helps other people,” she says. “And, you know, I just love the fact that they’re not just helping themselves, but they’re helping others. So it says to me, ‘Wow, they’re paying attention.’”
Etienne runs WalkGood LA, which he founded in June 2020, months after Ahmaud Arbery was fatally shot while running, to help Black and brown people in Los Angeles use movement to heal. Through activities like community yoga classes, guided meditations, hikes, and run clubs, WalkGoodLA serves as a space where Ralph says “people go to be their best selves.” Ivy Coco, on the other hand, serves as her mother’s stylist and is responsible for the bold colors, amazing cuts, and “classic, clean fashion” Ralph is seen wearing at events.
When I ask her how she and Ivy Coco navigate their work relationship, she says the trust between them goes a long way. “She knows that I know what I like,” she says. “We lean into things like color because I love color. And very often people want to tell you, ‘You need to look like this,’ or, ‘You need to look like that.’ You need to [wear things] that are gonna make you feel comfortable, you know? And she and I work together to make that happen.”
Ralph is committed to holding the door open for the next generation and has built a beautiful relationship with Quinta Brunson, the creator of Abbott Elementary. “Quinta Brunson knew of my journey,” she says. “Quinta Brunson chose me for this role, and this has changed my life at this point in my career and my living on this Earth.”
Despite knowing that her innate talents and drive got her to this point, Ralph still projects a sense of awe and gratitude when talking about her life. “I wake up in the morning, I’m still in my right mind. I’m still happy to be in show business,” she says. “I still have ideas of movies I want to make. I want to speak to Congress and talk to them about education. Now, because of a show like Abbott Elementary, they’re paying attention. I love it. I love the fact that I get to look at Quinta doggone every day and I say, ‘Look what the future has brought.’”
If Ralph’s constant evolution is any indication, younger folks actually have a lot to look forward to as we age—a sacred privilege that not everyone, especially Black people, who have a lower life expectancy than white and Hispanic people, get to experience. For those of us who are lucky enough to become elders, Ralph wants us to know that no matter how old we get, “there are still miracles out there to be had.” It’s never too late to step into your purpose and live the grandest life imaginable, no matter how you define it. And your goals aren’t less valuable or no longer worth pursuing just because, as Ralph says, “you turn 40, 50, or 60.” For anyone who feels stuck, or as if their dreams have passed them by, Ralph offers this reminder: “You gotta have guts to live.”
“The reason most people stay the same is because change is difficult,” she continues. “It is so much easier to stay where you are than it is to get up the courage, the belief, the strength, the desire, the focus to move forward. It takes a lot. You climb, and the top of one mountain is the bottom of another.”
As she reviews the peaks and valleys of her life, looking back on all she’s fought through to get there, she’s celebrating every single step of the journey. As actor Bevy Smith said in her 2022 TED Talk, “It gets greater later”—a motto that Ralph is exemplifying every single day. She’s not at the end; she’s just getting started. “If you are not living, you are dead,” she says. “And while I’m living, I’m going to enjoy myself. Take the plastic off the furniture. Pull out the good plates. If you’ve never used them, give them away to some folks who will. Unpack all that good stuff. I’m telling you: People need to start living a good life.”
Photography: Andy Jackson. Creative direction: Amber Venerable. Wardrobe styling: Kat Typaldos. Hair: Sharif Poston. Makeup: Juanice Reed. Manicure: Jill Thomas. Prop stylist: James Lear. Production: Melissa Kramer. Editor-in-chief: Rachel Wilkerson Miller.
