Sheryl Lee Ralph shares tales from her storied career: a Barbie from Denzel, a haunted hotel, Bill Clinton, and more

Sheryl Lee Ralph showed us what she's capable of from the beginning.

Whether you met her as Florence Watson, Deena Jones, Deidra "Dee" Mitchell or Barbara Howard, it’s clear that Ralph exudes talent. Since her start in 1977, her credits are full of incredible performances, directors, and costars, but her current role on Abbott Elementary has taken her career to new heights. “I am a 40-year overnight sensation and it feels good,” she tells EW.

To honor a career that began by working with Sidney Poitier and led her to the halls of Willard R. Abbott Elementary School, we walked down memory lane with Ralph herself. 

A Piece of the Action (1977)

“That was a really good beginning,” she says about her first role in A Piece of the Action. At 20 years old, she was being directed by, and acting alongside, Sidney Poitier in the film about two teenage thieves trying to leave crime behind. In it, she plays an outspoken teen named Barbara Hanley. What stands out most to Ralph was the journey to the Warner Brothers lot. After returning from a work trip, she received a call from her acting teacher about the role and caught a ride to the lot with her cousin Mabel the following day. “Does it get more Hollywood than that,” she says, remembering the day. When they got through the L.A. traffic for the meeting, Mabel waited by the car with a pack of cigarettes in her hand and told Ralph to go get her future. She did, appearing in the film alongside Poitier, James Earl Jones, and Denise Nicholas, in which Ralph delivers an iconic speech about attention span that people still reference all these years later.

The Mighty Quinn (1989)

A decade after getting her start, Ralph appeared opposite her good friend Denzel Washington in 1989’s The Mighty Quinn. The two actors, along with Washington’s wife Pauletta, participated in the Los Angeles Children’s Toy Drive together and one day Washington came to Ralph’s home with a gift for her: an Island Barbie. The present symbolized that they were going to Jamaica to film the movie. “That’s how I got The Mighty Quinn. This all happened right before Denzel became Denzel,” she recalls. In the film, a thrilling crime story full of mystery, musical moments, and comedy, Ralph plays the estranged wife of Washington’s Chief Xavier Quinn. “It was one of the best filmmaking experiences ever. We just had a wonderful time in Port Antonio,” she says.

The Mighty Quinn production left quite the impression on the town as well. A road was built in town so they could get the steady shots for the film and to this day that road is still there in Jamaica. “I think about it all the time,” she says.

To Sleep With Anger (1990)

A year after playing Lola Quinn, Ralph appeared in To Sleep With Anger. The black comedy, written and directed by Charles Burnett, starred Danny Glover as the mysterious Harry. Ralph, who plays Linda, the daughter-in-law to the film’s central couple, looks back fondly on the experience not only because of Burnett’s talent but how he fought for her to be in the film. “There were producers who said I was too dark, they wanted someone with a lighter complexion. Somebody said something about my legs being too thick. It was crazy, but he fought for me,” she says.

Making a small independent film is a difficult process and Ralph remembers one instance where frustration took over. Things were running behind so scenes were going to get cut, including one of Ralph’s that she thought was important. “I don’t know what happened inside of me because we were up on a hill somewhere and we had to have a car take us down, but I packed up my stuff in my little bag and started walking down the hill,” she shares. Shortly after Glover was knocking on her trailer door to ask what happened because without her they wouldn’t “have a movie.”

In the end, it was a good thing Ralph stood her ground and Glover had her back. She won Best Supporting Actress at the Independent Spirit Awards for the role and the speech she made about the need for access for Black actresses ended up getting written up and making the rounds throughout the industry. “That was a defining moment for me,” she says.

New Attitude (1990)

New Attitude came about when one question was asked: Why can’t a Black actress have her own TV series? Enter the St. James sisters! The short lived ABC series, which premiered in 1990 and aired six episodes during ABC’s TGIF lineup, followed Vicki (Ralph) and Yvonne (Phyllis Yvonne Stickney) as they opened their new beauty salon. Ralph remembers getting to sing the theme song and working with a 12-year-old Larenz Tate, and loving getting the opportunity to front the series while having a blast in her fictional salon. “It had great potential. We did far too few episodes, but what a great time at ABC,” she says, “So many times in my life it goes back to ABC.”

Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)

Florence Watson is one the character’s Ralph is best known for. As the fierce mother who clashes with Whoopi Goldberg’s Sister Mary Clarence in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, fans quote lines from her character and sing songs from the movie to this day. Of the many wonderful memories of making the film, Ralph shares that seeing the young cast members who went on to have full careers and lives the most. “To see a 16-year-old Lauryn Hill with such talent and confidence was just wonderful to see and be a part of,” she says. Ralph remembers watching Hill, as well as War and Treaty singer Tanya Trotter (then Tanya Blount), who was part of the film’s choir, sitting at the piano singing "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" and knowing she was witnessing something special. While she had no idea the impact her role (she smiles thinking about the memes that have been made and the times people quote her) and the film would make, she says she always knew it was an experience she would cherish.

Designing Women (1992-1993)

Ralph had one big question about Designing Women and it led to her landing a role. As the president of an organization called L.A.’s Young Black Professionals, she held an event for then-Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton (because she was convinced he’d be president). After saying hello to Clinton, she noticed Designing Women EP Harry Thomason behind him. “I go right up to this man and I said ‘Hello my name is Sheryl Lee Ralph and I am your host for this evening and why is it that Meshach Taylor as Anthony Bouvier doesn’t have a Black girlfriend? This show is based in Atlanta and I know those Designing Women know a few Black people,” she recalls. He asked if she knew casting director Tim Flack, which she did, and that is how she landed the role of Etienne Toussaint-Bouvier. Years later, she named her son after the character.

Moesha (1996–2001)

Deidra "Dee" Mitchell, Ralph’s character on Moesha, was a fixture in many Black households as the wise high school principal and stepmother to Brandy Norwood’s Moesha. "All of us were playing these different images of Black people from different walks of life. Me as a principal of Crenshaw High who had a wholesome family unit living and working out their problems together for the whole world to see,” she says about the beloved series.

Moesha had a profound impact on viewers and Ralph’s career. “We didn’t win an Image award. We didn’t get nominated for an Emmy, but sometimes that’s not what you do the good work for,” she explains. It’s the people who tell her through Dee she raised them. As for Ralph, the series began 11 years after Dreamgirls and gave her career stability in way she hadn’t had before. She went on to star in five of the show’s six seasons.

Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel (2000)

Based on her friend Leslie Jordan’s play, Ralph appears as Nurse Betty Redford in Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel. Jordan and Ralph shared an agent who recommended her for the role. “That was one of those movies where a friend calls you up and says ‘I’m doing this movie. Can you help me?” she shares. What stands out from the experience is the film’s shooting location. “We shot that in the Ambassador Hotel where Robert Kennedy was assassinated and I swear that place was haunted,” she recalls.

The two friends shared space again years later with her dressing room for Abbott Elementary and his for Call Me Kat being just down the hall from one another on the Warner Brothers.

Ray Donovan (2013-2020)

Ray Donovan was a point where things shifted in Ralph’s career. In the Showtime drama she played Claudette, the girlfriend of complex Donovan patriarch Mickey Donovan (Jon Voight). “Don’t ask me what it was about the performance, but I became an actress with a layered performance and that is really how a lot of people started seeing me after Ray Donovan. It was challenging at times, but that was another really wonderful experience for me.” While working on the series, she remembers having a conversation about the show with a director she respected. “He said, ‘There is this actress that you have got to meet. Her performance is incredible and she plays Mickey’s girlfriend,” she says, “He goes through the episode with me and had no idea that it was me.”

MacGyver (2017–2019)

“The whole look of Sheryl Lee Ralph changed with MacGyver,” she says, noting, “This woman was braided down, wore combat boots and she was a boss with her three boss children.” As Mama Emma Colton, Ralph recurred as the matriarch of a family of bounty hunters that would often collide with Lucas Till’s Angus MacGyver team during the CBS action reboot’s first three seasons. She loved getting to do action sequences and use big guns, a new experience for the actress.

The Coltons were a hit with fans as many wanted them to have a series centering the family. “People would write in constantly. They wanted to see the spinoff,” she says, “It didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean that something similar can’t happen in the future.”

Abbott Elementary (2021-present)

From the beginning of the pilot, Ralph was sure that Abbott Elementary was going to be something, but what stands out is getting the call from Quinta Brunson saying she needed “a queen” for the role of Barbara Howard. “The roles I have chosen have been for other young people coming behind me to know they can make choices for themselves and they can craft their careers,” she says. To be chosen to be part of what she considers to be “one of the greatest casts on TV right now” was a gift and a major transition point for her career. Playing the beloved teacher on the ABC smash hit has revitalized Ralph’s career and led to new work and award recognition (including her first Emmy) for the deserving actress more than four decades after she got her start playing another Barbara.

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