Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another edition of the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

My thanks as always for clicking and listening along.

I got a great one for you this week with someone who is truly a life force and a light

in this world. She is Cheryl Lee Ralph. She's one of the stars of the hit series Abbott Elementary where she plays Barbara Howard

the no-nonsense kindergarten teacher who's seen a few things in her day while working in the

Philadelphia Public School system.

Hilarious show, getting all the acclaim and Emmy awards it deserves, including one

for Cheryl last year. She won for Best Supporting Actress in a comedy, becoming only the second black woman ever to win that award.

And she's been through a lot, she's lived a lot in her life in her career, she has so much wisdom, she's so positive, she's so positive she's so uplifting and she talks

about her long road to this moment that she's finally having I mean just in the

last year she sang at the Super Bowl she she was Mrs. Clause in the Thanksgiving Day

parade, she's about to get her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and it does feel

like Abbott Elementary is sort of this reward at the end of almost 40 years of work. More than 40 years

of work actually. She got her first part on Broadway in 1981. She originated

the role of Dina Jones in the original production of Dream Girls.

That's the role that Piancé later played in the movie version of it and had a lot of success

and a lot of frustration between Broadway and Abbott Elementary that she gets into.

She's just a joy to be around, a joy to talk with, and I think you'll enjoy spending a little

time as much as I did with Cheryl Lee Ralph right now on the

Sunday sit-down podcast. It's such a pleasure. It's great to be here with you.

Thank you for doing this. I've been looking forward to it. Oh me too.

Yes. Me too. And especially in this sort of grand room it's I think it's

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