“The View” from Sherri Shepherd’s post-talk show perch is spectacular.
Since parting ways with “The View” in 2014, the work that she’s landed has been as diverse as the hosts of the long-running ABC show.
Shepherd, 52, has a starring role as a school principal in the new Netflix series “Mr. Iglesias,” she hosts the Game Show Network’s “Best Ever Trivia Show,” and fans will see her for the first time in a dramatic lead role when the film “Brian Banks” hits theaters Aug. 9.
The Chicago native is also in New York for the last stop of the “Ladies Night Out” comedy tour at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre this Saturday.
But she’s not bragging.
“There’s time when I’ve been unemployed, I just don’t put it on Instagram,” Shepherd told the Daily News. “I’m very thankful that the work still keeps coming in. I’m thankful to still be relevant, that people still like working with me.”
At Saturday’s show, hosted by reality TV vixen NeNe Leakes, she’ll be joined by longtime friends and fellow comediennes Loni Love, Kym Whitley and Adele Givens.
“I’m excited about this. It’s just everything from a lady’s point of view,” Shepherd said. “So you got your clean to your raunchy to everything in between. That’s what I love. Loni brings it in and she’s dating a new man. I’m talking about all the trials and travails of being married and divorced twice. And NeNe spills the tea about ‘Real Housewives.'”
Shepherd revealed that she joined the tour after actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish dropped out due to other obligations.
With a 20-plus-year career in comedy, Shepherd said her routine has changed with the times.
“Twenty years ago I was in the space of, ‘I can’t wait for my Prince Charming to come on a white horse and deliver me from all the evil,’ but I found out my Prince Charming, his horse was broke down and he needed a princess to buy him a new horse and more horses,” she quipped.
“It’s just evolving,” she said of her comedy routine. “Now I have a son who’s 14 who has turned into an alien, has taken my child and given me somebody that resembles my son. But this alien hates me and I have this teenager here that I don’t recognize anymore, who is now, everything I do he’s not impressed. I’m really talking about being the mother of a teenager and dealing with that while trying to date and also dealing with ex-husbands.”
The former “Less Than Perfect” actress has given up the matchmaking aspect of finding love after her friend, actress Niecy Nash, introduced her to her former husband, Lamar Sally, with whom she was embroiled in a bitter divorce and custody battle a few years ago.
Married in 2011, the couple separated and divorced three years later in the midst of a surrogacy battle, which eventually left Shepherd on the hook for child support payments for a baby she had no biological link to.
“I don’t want nobody match-make me anymore,” Shepherd said. “I think I’ll get on my own with it, online dating. I’m not so much looking for love. I’m looking for somebody to leave before my son wakes up in the morning.”
Next month, theater-goers will get a chance to see Shepherd flex her dramatic acting muscles in the biopic “Brian Banks,” based on the heart-breaking real-life story of the rising NFL hopeful who was wrongly accused and convicted of rape and sent to prison. Shepherd stars as Brian’s mom, Leomia.
“Twelve years of his life were taken away because they just automatically believed somebody and didn’t do the due diligence,” Shepherd said. “And not only that, at 16 years old, they wouldn’t let him consult with his mother and forced him to make a decision that affected the rest of his life. So being able to play that woman who advocates for her child was something really special to me because I have to advocate for my son Jeffrey all the time.”
Although she appeared in Lee Daniels’ critically acclaimed 2009 film “Precious” and starred in the 2012 Lifetime movie “Abducted: the Carlina White Story,” this marks Shepherd’s first dramatic lead role in a film.
“I’m so excited about this project because I had to fight really hard to even get an audition for this part because they wanted Viola Davis and then they kept mentioning Octavia [Spencer],” she said. “Then the name Jada [Pinkett Smith] came up and then the name Halle [Berry] came up.
“They didn’t want to see me because it’s very hard for comedic actresses to go over to the dramatic side,” Shepherd added. “You need somebody that believes in you. For me it was [director] Tom Shadyac, who directed great films by Robin Williams, Jim Carrey. He believed in me and he gave me a chance.”
She said that the upcoming movie — also starring Aldis Hodge as Brian, and Greg Kinnear as Justin Brooks, the co-founder of the California Innocence Project — “truly is a story also of triumph and how you forgive and how you keep moving forward.”
