Sheryl Lee Ralph Shares Her View From the Top

THE ABBOTT ELEMENTARY STAR REFLECTS ON LIFE, LOVE AND ENJOYING HER NEW TIME TO SHINE

- By JANINE RUBENSTEIN

In a few days Sheryl Lee Ralph’s success will be set in stone—literally—with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and, amid her excitement, she has some questions. “It’s not as if they just hand these things out like candy,” she says of the ceremony, taking place on Jan. 29. Still, the multi-hyphenate star has no idea which entertainment symbol will be used to denote her life’s work. “Oh my goodness, I don’t know. I should ask,” she says. “It could be for the Tonys, for the Grammys, the Emmys and who knows what’s next.”

Indeed, after many decades of hard-won success across stage and screen, Ralph is currently enjoying a career renaissance no one saw coming. No one, that is, except for her iconic mentors, including the late Maya Angelou and Cicely Tyson. “One day I was on a plane, and Cicely Tyson said, ‘Many great things are going to happen to you. Many, many, many,’ ” Ralph recalls. “The elders have been good to me, and they would not be surprised.”

But at 69, Ralph has a woman 34 years her junior to thank for the career highs she’s hitting now. In 2021 actress and showrunner Quinta Brunson tapped her to play veteran educator Barbara Howard on ABC’s sitcom Abbott Elementary, and in 2022 Ralph earned her first Emmy Award for the role. “I’m in a show that is literally lightning in a bottle,” Ralph says. “But it was not given to me. I worked towards this moment, and it took a young person to see and value the work and offer me this way forward. That doesn’t happen a lot, but it happened to me.”

That body of work includes her very first role in the 1977 film A Piece of the Action alongside Sidney Poitier, as well as her Tony-nominated run in the original Broadway production of Dreamgirls.