Sheryl Lee Ralph Never (But Almost) Gave Up

She's Emmy nominated for Abbott Elementary. We popped in to visit a legend.

- Ira Madison III

ACTRESS, SINGER, and Hollywood icon Sheryl Lee Ralph welcomes me into her home as if I were one of her children. At her Hancock Park-adjacent residence in L.A., a sweeping set of stairs leads to her front door. Opening it, she looks every bit the fabulous woman who starred as Deena Jones on Broadway in Dreamgirls. I expect her place to be nothing short of chic, chic, chic.

And it is chic, but it's more in keeping with the style of a mother who has nurtured us through a television screen for decades. It's not cold-this house is lived in. She purchased it in the early 1980s with the money she earned from her first series contract role on TV, ABC's It's a Living. It feels like I'm in my own mother's home or in the home of any Black woman who has been a mother figure, guardian, or babysitter throughout my life. I'm shocked the furniture isn't preserved with plastic, but I suppose she can afford to remove a stain from her couch if necessary.

Since the birth of the family sitcom, America has had any number of surrogate mothers. Black sitcom characters like Florida Evans and Vivian Banks took up the mantle of June Cleaver and Carol Brady. To paraphrase Oprah Winfrey, they are the mothers we never had.

It's rare that an actress gets to be a surrogate mother twice in her career, or even once with any lasting impact, but television history will remember Moesha's Dee Mitchell and Abbott Elementary's Barbara Howard, two matriarchs portrayed by Ralph. On the former, we saw Ralph as the stepmother of the Mitchell clan, keeping her eye on a rebellious Brandy Norwood. On the latter, we see Ralph act as a guardian-hopeful, hilarious, kind, and cynical all at once-to her students at an underprivileged Philadelphia elementary school.