Nineteen years after confessing in her journal that she was terrified to join “The View,” the outspoken Christian is the first woman to play the Genie in “Aladdin,” showing a new generation of women what faith can do with fear.
By EEW Magazine Online News Editors
Sherri Shepherd holds a lamp from Disney’s “Aladdin” in a promotional photo released ahead of her history-making run as the Genie on Broadway. Photo: Matthew Murphy © Disney
In July 2007, Sherri Shepherd opened her journal and admitted she was scared. “The View” had just offered her a permanent co-host seat, an invitation she had turned down for two years because the show stirred every insecurity she had. “Lord, do you really think I’ll be able to handle this?” she wrote. She copied out Proverbs 16:3, a reminder to depend on the Lord in whatever she did.
She concluded that the very area that frightened her was where God was calling her. She said yes.
Nineteen years later, Shepherd is doing it afraid again, and making history. The Emmy winner, 59, became the first woman to play the Genie in Disney’s “Aladdin” on Broadway when her limited run began Oct. 16 at the New Amsterdam Theatre. She continues through Jan. 3, 2027.
Her path is a portrait of faith meeting fear head-on, and of the doors that open on the other side. The role arrives five months after “Sherri,” her syndicated talk show, aired its final episode. Debmar-Mercury canceled the series in February after four seasons, citing a changing daytime landscape. When the news became public, Shepherd told viewers the show had been built on joy and that her prayer had always been for them to leave happier than they came.
Sherri Shepherd on the set of her syndicated talk show, “Sherri,” which aired its final episode in May after four seasons. Photo: Jocelyn Prescod/”Sherri”
Raised in the Jehovah’s Witness faith, Shepherd later became an outspoken Christian, and she has leaned on that faith through hard seasons. She told ABC News’ Paula Faris in 2018 that her faith is what allows her to “get up and keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
The Genie tested that faith in a new way. It is one of Broadway’s most demanding comic roles, and Shepherd told ABC7 she worried about living up to such an iconic part before leaning on her personal mantra: do things that scare you. She found freedom and comfort in knowing that, as the first woman in the part, she has no one to be compared to.
Doing it afraid has also meant asking for help. “Friend Like Me,” the Genie’s showstopper, runs nearly eight minutes. Fellow Broadway stars Kristin Chenoweth, Wayne Brady and Michelle Williams have advised her to pace herself, she told The Broadway Show. Chenoweth even bought her a mask announcing she is on vocal rest.
Shepherd plays the Genie as a mother figure to a young man who has none. In one moment where the Genie and Aladdin are meant to fist bump, she said, she grabbed his face instead. It is a fresh take on a role long built as a male showcase. The part’s storied history includes Robin Williams, who voiced the Genie in Disney’s 1992 animated film, and James Monroe Iglehart, who won a Tony Award for originating the role when the musical opened on Broadway in 2014.
Others believed in her long before the spotlight found her. As a legal secretary, Shepherd needed $600 for a stand-up comedy class, and the secretaries and attorneys she worked with pooled the money, she told ABC7. Shepherd said those former colleagues are making the trip from California to see her as the Genie.
She has seen what courage on a stage can plant in someone else. Her only previous Broadway outing came in 2014, when she and Keke Palmer made history in Rodgers + Hammerstein’s “Cinderella.” Shepherd became the first Black actress to play the stepmother Madame on Broadway, and Palmer the first to play Cinderella, according to TheWrap.
Keke Palmer, left, as Cinderella and Sherri Shepherd as the stepmother Madame in Rodgers + Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” on Broadway in 2014. The pair became the first Black actresses to play the roles on Broadway. Photo: Carol Rosegg/Playbill
A young woman recently showed Shepherd a photo of herself at about 10 years old, standing between the two stars. She told Shepherd she had just graduated with a degree in journalism and theater. “That’s how you plant seeds,” Shepherd said.
She is planting again. Shepherd told The Associated Press she wants children in the audience to feel what she felt as a girl watching Stephanie Mills in “The Wiz.” “I want the children to see the possibilities,” she said, including little girls who once dressed as princesses discovering they could be the Genie.
Asked what she would tell her 10-year-old self if that girl were sitting in the audience, Shepherd, who has used her faith to overcome fear again and again, had her answer ready: “Look what we accomplished.”