Sherri Shepherd has come to the defense of “The Talk” co-host Sheryl Underwood, who has faced criticism for her exchange with Sharon Osbourne, who defended Piers Morgan live on air.
Osbourne went to bat for Morgan, denying that he is a racist despite his ongoing harassment of the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle.
“It crosses a line when you’re a grownup and somebody tells you what you can and cannot do emotionally. When they tell you: You are not allowed to cry,” the former co-host of “The View” host remarked.
“Um, I’m grown,” Shepherd told Yahoo Entertainment of how she would have responded. “I’m raising children. This is a job for me, the way it is for you. So how dare you tell me how I can act? I think that was definitely crossing the line. I would expect an apology to be forthcoming because you’re two grown women.”
Shepherd slammed Osbourne for not serving up an immediate apology to Underwood. “That’s a respect thing… If we would get into spats, an apology came right away because we cared about each other.”
Shepherd thinks Underwood’s feelings have been grossly underlooked:
“I think this has been hard because nobody’s talking about Sheryl,” she adds. “I think everybody’s been talking about Sharon, Sharon, Sharon. But what did Sheryl Underwood have to go through on The Talk when she had to speak in very slow and measured terms, and to talk to Sharon while Sharon was going off. When they tried to cut to commercial and you hear curse words coming out of Sharon’s mouth. They’ve been together [10] seasons. What was that for her? I think that’s a hard thing to have a woman talk to you in that kind of way. As well as a trigger for a lot of women who have to be in this situation of someone treating you like you’re less than.”
