One of the co-hosts of "The View," comedian/actress Sherri Shepherd has had a busy year. She won an Emmy, wrote a book and has a new show on Lifetime. "The Sherri Show" is vaguely based on her life in standup comedy and airs 10 p.m. EST Tuesdays. The author of "Permission Slips: Every Woman's Guide to Giving Herself a Break" recently divorced and is raising her son Jeffrey in New York City.
Excerpts from an interview:
Q: You've had a great year. Do you ever get superstitious about all the good stuff happening?
A: Yeah, I always think I'm going to wake up and a lawyer's gonna go, "Stop dreaming and get my coffee," because I was a legal secretary. So I always think, "Gosh, pinch me, is this real?"
Q: How has it been maintaining your 40-pound weight loss?
A: The 40 pounds total is (from) when I first started "The View." I had it off for a year and then I started going back to the way I was eating. That's when I decided to do my swimsuit challenge for myself. So far I've been doing good. Now I'm not exercising at the intensity that I had. But I'm doing OK.
Q: Were you ever a skinny kid, or was weight always an issue?
A: I've always struggled with my weight. It didn't start being a big deal to me, I think, until I was in high school. Now I'm just trying to be healthy for me. My mom passed away at 41 from diabetes. I have it, so it's not so much I'm trying to get skinny, I just want to be healthy because I have a 4-year-old. I really want to be around for him.
Q: In your book you talk about being in jail.
A: Eight days. It changed my perspective in the fact that I'll never go back. I'll tell you that much. I was going through a period in my life where I was very irresponsible. I used to be a (Jehovah's Witness), and their teaching was that Armageddon was going to come soon and figured, well, if it's going to come soon, then I don't have to pay my bills. I don't have to pay parking tickets. I hadn't paid a lot of parking tickets, and they became warrants for my arrest, so that's why I went to jail. It was irresponsible choices on my part. It did have a silver lining. I'm the kind of person since I went to jail, I don't like bills to come more than once. I am on time with my credit-card bills, my car payment, my mortgage. I'm not late.
Q: What was it like to realize you were financially secure?
A: I don't think I've ever felt like that. Even though, I guess, you could look at me and go, "Yeah, you are pretty successful." Things always happen. You know I was in a custody battle for a year, going through a divorce. Anybody who has gone through an ugly divorce knows that attorneys will take your money. And fighting for custody of my son for a year, I went through all my savings. I thank God every day that I have a job to go to. I work really, really hard to make sure my son has a financial future, and me, too.
Q: You survived the cheating husband, and now you are a single mom. Do you think about remarrying?
A: Oh, absolutely. I love being married. Except for that little hiccup in our marriage (laughing) of the infidelity. But right now, like what the book says, I give myself permission to say, "It doesn't have to be now." I'm a single woman, and there are really wonderful things about being a single person. I want to find out what those things are. Right now is not the time because I'm working two jobs. I'm trying to take care of my son. I really don't have a lot of time for the distraction of how I make somebody else happy. I'm not chasing it. I mean I joke about it on "The View" because that's my shtick. But really, truly right now, I'm pretty fulfilled.
Q: The book is a lot about making mistakes and having the ability to move on. You talk about being embarrassed after all the flak with what you said on "The View" a couple of years ago about not being sure the world was round.
A: It hurt, all the comments that came afterward. It hurt what people said because it was a mistake and nobody wanted to give me that leeway. It seemed like everybody just hated me. But having such wonderful women stand around me and go, "We are here for you," especially having Barbara Walters. And other women sending me letters saying, "I don't care if the world is round or flat. I'm just trying to work this job, trying to take care of my kids," that made me feel better. It's OK if you don't meet somebody else's standards. I know what my intention was. I know I made a mistake. I can't spend two or three years trying to apologize.
(Patricia Sheridan can be reached at psheridan(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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