For Sherri Shepherd, 'Sherri' is reality television

By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — She has gone down eight dress sizes.

But Sherri Shepherd is feeling twice as big today. Her autobiographical sitcom, Sherri, premieres on Lifetime (tonight at 7 ET/PT), the same day as her advice book, Permission Slips: Every Woman's Guide to Giving Herself a Break, hits bookstores. Next week, the Lifetime show moves to its regular slot (Tuesday 10 p.m. ET/PT).

"It's so in sync," Shepherd, 42, says of her dual debuts. "I've dreamed about this for 20 years, so it doesn't feel like work."

In fact, Shepherd spends much of her day running from her morning gig as co-host of ABC's gab-fest The Viewto her second job as the star of her new series. Fortunately for the single mom of Jeffrey, 4, the role isn't a stretch.

"This character is based on me and my stand-up. I look at it like I had lemons dumped in my lap and managed to make lemonade for everybody," Shepherd says. "There was infidelity in my marriage. The other woman got pregnant. I had to deal with it."

The pilot "is pretty much verbatim what I went through: me confronting the girl and her saying to me, 'I'm just a big fan of yours,' " says Shepherd, who thanked her for the compliment. "My thought process was, 'You don't want to lose fans, even if they're the other woman.' "

Her book also deals with her family — Shepherd and the other woman are in contact, and their sons are close — as well as her tendency to say embarrassing things on The View. She has said she doesn't vote and doesn't believe in evolution.

"The book kind of parallels the show. It came about when I said I didn't know if the Earth was round (on The View)," she says. "It was my second or third day there, and I was so nervous. I'm not used to debating. I don't like to argue. This was so out of my comfort zone, and I just zoned out. That will follow me to the day I die. When you look me up, it's all about how I didn't know if the Earth was round or flat."

So her book emphasizes that "we just have to give ourselves permission to say it's OK. ... We have to stop beating ourselves up. As women, we try to be perfect."

To keep her energy up, Shepherd gets up at 6 a.m. every day and works out with her trainer four times a week. She hates exercise, she says, but does it anyway so she "can run around and play with my boy," she says.

She has breakfast with her son, preps for The View, and after shooting it heads to her Penn Station studio to shoot Sherri. Yes, she's busy, but should Tina Fey call, Shepherd says she'll show up to play her recurring role on NBC's 30 Rock as Tracy Morgan's disgruntled wife.

"I will make time. Are you kidding? Tina takes Tracy's life and writes that. She takes every nuance of Tracy and puts it on the page," says Shepherd, who knows from experience just how nutty Morgan's existence can be.

"I used to live eight floors below him, and when his place flooded, it flooded my place and they evacuated me. Now he's moved. They put us in another apartment for two weeks. ... I haven't seen Tracy. He owes me dinner."