Former The View host Sherri Shepherd called out an “unnamed celebrity” she said “grabbed” her at a Broadway premiere Sunday night.
“I get along with everybody, I really do,” Shepherd said on her daytime talk show Monday before breaking down the alleged incident that she said occurred at the premiere of Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal’s Othello over the weekend.
“I’m talking to this unnamed celebrity actress, who shall remain nameless,” Shepherd went on. “I’m standing there talking, somebody grabbed my arms and they forcefully turned me around,” she explained. “I’m in a good mood so I go, ‘Hi what’s going on?’ because I know her.”
The unnamed actress didn’t share her pleasant demeanor, however. “She says to me, she goes, ‘You’ve been shading me a lot.’” Shepherd’s show, which took over Wendy Williams’ time slot when the talk legend went off air due to health issues, relies heavily on celebrity gossip.
“I said, ‘No, no I haven’t,’” Shepherd continued Monday, “because I was really confused and then she goes, ‘Yes you have,’ and then she just walked off! Now let me tell you something, first of all, I know who I shade.”
The host maintained that the actress was someone she never spoke ill of on air and insisted the whole thing was a big mix up. “I never have shaded this unnamed celebrity,” she said.
Shepherd provided no other clues besides the person’s gender, but Page Six reported without citation that the celebrity in question is veteran actress Nia Long. Shepherd’s producer told her on air that the actress “might” be from Chicago, and Long, notably, is not. The Daily Beast has reached out to Long for comment.
The talk show host said that she and the mystery celebrity have “known each other a long time,” and she knows she never “shaded” her because “when something scandalous came up about you, I was on your side when it happened.” Despite their presumed goodwill toward each other, Shepherd said the person in question treated her like an enemy on Sunday.
“She came up to me in front of everybody,” Shepherd said, “so I was mad. I was really mad and I said, ‘You know what, you don’t freaking get to do that to me.’ So I went to the bathroom during intermission” to confront her. “I stood there for 15 minutes waiting for a meeting in the ladies room,” she said, but the actress never showed up.
Shepherd proposed a different solution on Monday. “I would say to ‘unnamed celebrity,’ because you think I shaded you, which means you watch my show… Come sit on my couch so we can talk about it. And you know who you are!”
For more, listen to Sherri Shepherd on The Last Laugh podcast.
