During her early days in stand-up, Sherri Shepherd followed tough acts like Sheryl Underwood and JB Smoove.
One act she didn’t expect to follow: the cops.
“I wasn’t paying my bills,” she told me on this week’s episode of “Renaissance Man.”
“I was in a religion that was like, I felt the end of the world was coming, and so I didn’t pay any of my bills.”
The end of the world never came, but her bills did.
One night, she was heading into the legendary Los Angeles club the Comedy Store — dressed to the nines, mind you — and she was hit with reality.
Police hauled her off to jail, where she spent eight days.
“I had $10,000 worth of unpaid moving violations,” Sherri confessed. “When they give you a ticket on a moving violation, if you don’t show up in court, it’s a bench warrant.
“So $10,000, with a bench warrant, they caught me. They got me on a Friday, which was Martin Luther King weekend.”
The former host of “The View” was allowed one phone call, which she made to her mother asking her to call the office where she worked as a legal secretary in the day.
“I said, ‘Can you tell them I need to take my vacation, because I’m going to be here for a minute,'” Sherri recalled.
“So that was one of the things I learned on my journey of becoming a stand-up. I learned to be responsible,” she said.
“I learned from going to jail, I never want to be in jail. No, I pay my bills on time. If I get one pink notice, I’m sweating.”
I can’t imagine she’s getting much of those notices these days. Especially with the résumé she’s built up, including forays into daytime TV and successful stints on sitcoms like “The Jamie Foxx Show” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
And then there’s her eponymous talk show, “Sherri,” that’s just been renewed for two more seasons. She also co-hosts a podcast, “Two Funny Mamas,” with her pal Kym Whitley.
But at 55, the road here was long and winding.
“This has been 18 years plus of wanting this dream of having my own talk show,” she said.
“But I had to mature into this dream, because I wasn’t ready.”
Sherri learned a lot about herself on the comedy stage — with a little help from D.L. Hughley and Katt Williams.
“I remember Katt Williams had a room in Compton and he would put me up and I’m like, ‘Katt, I’m scared.’”
But he told her: “There’s no such thing as being scared. You get up there and you do it.”
Meanwhile, D.L. coaxed her back onstage after being heckled.
“I remember doing those clubs and getting tough and getting better and getting confident,” Sherri said of the early days.
“It taught me to have a thick skin. It taught me not to take anything personal. It taught me to be tough and persevere and just push through.”
And as she notes, she’s from Chicago, where she was raised to be independent and tough.
But she was also taught to be grounded and not get a big head.
“Really, it has kept me humble, where I came up on the South Side of Chicago. And that’s where all my family is … The family that tells you, ‘You ain’t all that. Stop with all of that.’
“So I go home quite frequently,” she joked.
Detroit native Jalen Rose is a member of the University of Michigan’s iconoclastic Fab Five, who shook up the college hoops world in the early ’90s. He played 13 seasons in the NBA before transitioning into a media personality. Rose is an analyst for “NBA Countdown” and “Get Up,” and co-host of “Jalen & Jacoby.” He executive-produced “The Fab Five” for ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, is the author of the best-selling book “Got To Give the People What They Want,” a fashion tastemaker and co-founded the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, a public charter school in his hometown.
