Who is: Who is Sherri Evonne Shepherd?

Monday, August 4, 2008

Who is Sherri Evonne Shepherd?

Who is Sherri Evonne Shepherd? an American comedienne, actress, and television personality. She is one of five co-hosts on the ABC daytime talkshow, The View. As an actress, she is perhaps best known for her role on the sitcom Less Than Perfect and supporting film roles, most notably as Cornrows in the 2009 Oscar winning film Precious.

Shepherd was born in Chicago, Illinois April 22, 1967 she is (age 41).. At age 11, her family, which includes Shepherd's three sisters, moved to Hoffman Estates, a Chicago suburb. She attended Winston Churchill Elementary School and Eisenhower Junior High School of Community Consolidated School District 54 and Hoffman Estates High School of District 211. Raised in a Jehovah's Witness family, Shepherd later became a born-again Christian, as an adult, after moving to Los Angeles. She is the Co-host on The View her Spouse(s) is Jeff Tarpley (-2007). Children Jeffrey Charles Tarpley Website sherrishepherd.com

Shepherd worked a day job as a legal secretary while doing stand-up comedy at night. Her first TV role was on the show, Cleghorne!, starring former Saturday Night Live cast member, Ellen Cleghorne. Three years later, Shepherd pursued acting and stand-up comedy full-time, working again as a legal secretary for a day job. She had guest and recurring roles on, Friends, Living Single and, Everybody Loves Raymond, as well as regular roles on, Suddenly Susan and, The Jamie Foxx Show. Her most visible role was as, "Ramona Platt," on, Less Than Perfect. The sitcom ran on ABC for four seasons, with the last episodes airing in 2006. She is developing a half-hour scripted sitcom based on her life for The CW Network. Shepherd has branched out to film, with roles in, Guess Who, Beauty Shop and, Cellular. She still performs stand-up comedy at Los Angeles area clubs like, the Comedy Store, and the Laugh Factory. She has also been a frequent and popular guest on Ellen DeGeneres' syndicated daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, for which she holds a record for being on the show the greatest number of times. She currently has a recurring role on, 30 Rock, as, "Angie Jordan," the wife of Tracy Morgan's character, "Tracy Jordan."

Co-host on The View In 2007, Sherri Shepherd became a frequent guest co-host on ABC's, The View. On the morning of May 23, 2007, while guest hosting, Shepherd became caught in the middle of one of The View's more heated exchanges between full time hosts, and political opposites, Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

As the clash grew more heated, a visibly shaken Shepherd made several attempts to step in and stop the argument, calling for producers to cut to the next commercial break, only to be told they had more time before the segment was finished. Shepherd eventually pulled herself and regular host Joy Behar completely away from the table, before the bickering came to an end, with a stilted reference to Shepherd's latest comedy DVD offering. Following these events, O'Donnell left the show, and along with Whoopi Goldberg, Gayle King, Kathy Griffin, Roseanne Barr and Mario Cantone, Shepherd was rumored to be in line to replace her. Eventually Goldberg was announced as the replacement moderator. Shepherd eventually became a permanent co-host on Monday September 10, 2007, after shaky salary negotiations, and attempts to hire Kathy Griffin as a cheaper alternative failed. A week before Shepherd became the show's fifth co-host, Barbara Walters announced that there would be a surprise permanent host. Online speculation within the blogosphere that Shepherd would become a permanent co-host of the show had persisted from as early as January 2007.[1]

It was announced on The View, on May 27, 2008, that Shepherd would co-host the 35th Daytime Emmy Awards on June 20, 2008. Her fellow co-host is All My Children star and Dancing With The Stars alum Cameron Mathison, who was on the show to announce it. Shepherd is nominated for her first Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host. In an interview about co-hosting on The View, Shepherd admitted to putting her foot in her mouth a lot. When this was brought up on the The View, Shepherd's co-host, Whoopi Goldberg, admitted that Sherri needs to think more before speaking because a lot of what she says "just isn't appropriate!"[2] Shepherd was criticized heavily after the September 18, 2007 broadcast of The View,[3] in which she stated that she didn't "believe in evolution. Period". She was asked by co-host Whoopi Goldberg, "Is the world flat?" She first responded, "…I don't know" and expanded that she "never thought about it". Shepherd continued that it was more important to her that she thought about how she was "going to feed [her] child". Barbara Walters replied to this defense of her scientific illiteracy, "You can do both." She then went on to quote scripture.[4] Similar criticism erupted after the December 4, 2007 broadcast of The View when, during a discussion initiated by Joy Behar about Epicurus, Shepherd attempted to assert that Christians existed in classical Greece, and that the Greeks threw them to the lions When confronted on this point, she further claimed that "Jesus came first" (before Greeks and Romans) and stated "I don't think anything predated Christians".[5][6] In January of 2008, Sherri Shepherd commented that gospel singer Shirley Caesar was "like a black Patti LaBelle." Her co-stars, seemingly perplexed by the comment, were all quick to inform her that LaBelle is also African American.[7] Shepherd also garnered ridicule after admitting to never voting because she just “never knew the dates or anything”; she stated, "I've never voted for anything in my life".[8][9]

Shepherd is married to comedian Jeff Tarpley (aka Jeff T. Aware); they have a son, Jeffrey Charles, born April 22, 2005. Though on the road to divorce after discovering that her husband was having an affair, Sherri Shepherd reported on The View on May 23, 2007 that she and her husband were back together. Tarpley had a child during the affair and Shepherd said she thought it would be wrong to keep the children apart. However, on September 21, 2007, View watchers learned that the reconciliation, which included marriage counseling, did not go well: Sherry had told the black Christian womens magazine Precious Times: that at one time she was in a very physically abusive relationship. She said "I was sleeping with a lot of guys and had more abortions than I would like to count. I had very low self-esteem and just wanted to die. I felt if someone killed me, it wouldn't even make a difference.