Sherri Shepherd

Sherri Evonne Shepherd was born on April 22, 1967, in Chicago, Illinois, the eldest of three daughters born to LaVerne (1941–1991) and Lawrence A. Shepherd. Her parents converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses faith during her childhood, and they later divorced when Shepherd was young. Her mother died in 1991, when Shepherd was 23 years old.

Shepherd built a career spanning acting, comedy, television hosting, writing, and podcasting. Her first television role came in 1995, when she starred as Victoria Carlson in Cleghorne!, a sitcom that aired for one season on The WB. Following its cancellation, she experienced a period of financial hardship that included losing her apartment and living without stable housing for a year. She subsequently appeared in recurring roles on Suddenly Susan and Everybody Loves Raymond in the late 1990s, and in 1998 appeared in an episode of Friends. From 1996 to 2001, she played Sheila Yarborough on The Jamie Foxx Show, and from 2002 to 2006 she starred as Ramona Platt in the lead role on Less Than Perfect. Between 2005 and 2009, she recurred as Sandra on the Fox sitcom The War at Home, and in 2007 she appeared in the IMAX rerelease of Transformers, playing Rhonda.

From 2007 to 2013, Shepherd had a recurring role as Angie Jordan, the wife of Tracy Jordan, on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. In 2009, she starred in a single-season Lifetime sitcom titled Sherri, based on her own life. She recurred as Daphne during the final season of How I Met Your Mother in 2013, and that same year made her Broadway debut in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. She later appeared in the NBC mockumentary legal comedy Trial & Error from 2017 to 2018, portraying Anne Flatch, and recurred on Mr. Iglesias from 2019 to 2020. She also held a recurring role on the HBO Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls.

As a television personality, Shepherd became a frequent guest co-host on ABC's The View in 2006 before joining as a permanent co-host in September 2007, replacing Star Jones. She remained with the program until 2014, continuing to appear as a contributor in 2015 and 2016. During her tenure, she and her co-hosts — Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck — won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host in 2009, one of multiple Daytime Emmy nominations Shepherd received for the program. She co-hosted the 35th Daytime Emmy Awards on June 20, 2008. Beginning in 2010, Shepherd hosted the Game Show Network version of The Newlywed Game, replacing Carnie Wilson, and continued in that role until the show ended in 2013. She hosted Best Ever Trivia Show on Game Show Network for 65 episodes beginning June 10, 2019, and has appeared regularly as a panelist on Funny You Should Ask since 2017. From October 2021 to June 2022, she served among the recurring guest hosts of The Wendy Williams Show. On February 22, 2022, distributor Debmar-Mercury announced Shepherd had been signed to host a new talk show, Sherri, which premiered on September 12, 2022, as a replacement for Wendy. In January 2023, the series was renewed for its second and third seasons through 2025.

In March 2012, Shepherd competed as a celebrity contestant on the fourteenth season of Dancing with the Stars, partnered with Val Chmerkovskiy and finishing in tenth place. In 2019, she participated in the second season of Fox's The Masked Singer as the character "Penguin," and hosted Dish Nation from 2019 through December 2022.

Shepherd published Permission Slips: Every Woman's Guide to Giving Herself a Break in October 2009, and holds a co-author credit on Plan D: How to Lose Weight and Beat Diabetes, published in 2013. She also raises funds for the YAI Sherri Shepherd "Believe in Abilities" Fund, which supports people of all ages with intellectual and developmental disabilities.