- Sheryl Underwood is a comedian, actress, television host, philanthropist, and Air Force veteran born on October 28, 1963, in Little Rock, Arkansas
- She is best known as a longtime co-host of the CBS daytime talk show The Talk, which she joined in 2011 and remained on until the show ended in December 2024
- Her husband died by suicide after just three years of marriage, a loss she kept private for over two decades before opening up publicly
- She still carries her deceased twin sister’s birth certificate with her everywhere she goes.
If you only know Sheryl Underwood as the funny one from The Talk, you do not know the half of it. Behind the big laugh, the sharp one-liners, and the daytime television smile is a woman who has survived things that would have broken most people completely. Grief. Trauma. Loss. And she turned every single piece of it into fuel. So who is Sheryl Underwood, really? Buckle up, because this story goes way deeper than a talk show couch.
A Childhood That Did Not Give Her Much to Work With
Sheryl Patrice Underwood was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, at St. Vincent Infirmary on October 28, 1963. And from the very first day of her life, things were already complicated. She and her twin sister were both born premature and placed in an incubator shortly after birth. Her twin did not survive. That detail alone is heartbreaking. But what makes it even more striking is what she does to keep that connection alive. Underwood revealed in 2011 that she still carries her twin’s birth certificate with her and considers her twin to be her guardian angel. She has carried it with her every single day for decades.
Growing up was not easy either. Underwood experienced domestic violence between her parents and spoke about it during her very first episode as a host of The Talk in 2011. And if that was not enough weight for one childhood, her older sister Frankie was diagnosed with polio, and Sheryl became her caregiver. She was not just surviving her own life. She was showing up for everyone else in hers, too.
From the Air Force to a Comedy Stage Nobody Expected Her to Reach
Here is where Sheryl Underwood’s story starts to shift. After completing her education, Underwood served in the United States Air Force Reserve for two years. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in liberal arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and later went on to earn a master’s degree in media management and mass communication. The woman was not just funny. She was building herself into someone formidable.
Underwood began her comedy career as the first female finalist in the 1989 Miller Lite Comedy Search. Think about what that means for a second. A young Black woman from Arkansas, with a complicated past and a disabled sister to care for, walked into one of the most competitive comedy spaces in the country and broke a barrier nobody had broken before her. She went on to receive the award for Funniest Female Comedian on Comic View by BET in 1994, a show which she later became the host of. She did not just enter the room. She eventually ran it.
She starred in films alongside Warren Beatty in Bullworth, and later appeared opposite Queen Latifah in Beauty Shop, playing the unforgettable Catfish Rita. Guest spots followed on shows including Def Comedy Jam, The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and The View. She was everywhere, and she was building something.
The Loss She Kept Hidden for Over Twenty Years
This is the part of who Sheryl Underwood is that most people still do not know. She was married to a man named Michael, who tragically died by suicide in 1990 after three years of marriage. She did not speak publicly about it for a very long time. It was not until the fall of 2011, during her time on The Talk, that Underwood revealed she had been married for three years before her husband, who may have suffered from clinical depression, died by suicide.
She waited over two decades to say it out loud. And when she finally did, she used it to advocate for mental health awareness and suicide prevention. That is the kind of person she is. She does not just carry pain. She finds a way to turn it into something that helps other people.
The Talk, the Legacy, and What Comes Next
In 2011, Underwood became a co-host of the CBS daytime talk show The Talk in its second season, replacing Leah Remini, and remained on the show until it ended in December 2024. For thirteen years, she sat at that table and made millions of people laugh, cry, and think. With Underwood at the table, The Talk received its first Daytime Emmy, and the show pulled in an average of more than three million viewers per day.
But the television career is only one piece of the picture. Underwood was elected as the 23rd International Grand Basileus, or President, of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, becoming the only full-time entertainer to ever hold the sorority’s highest post. Under her leadership, a health centre opened in 2011 for an all-girls’ high school in Ghana, providing health services to more than 2,000 students, and she initiated support for survivors of both the 2010 Haitian earthquakes and the 2011 tornadoes across the United States.
Underwood owns and operates Pack Rat Productions, Inc., and the Pack Rat Foundation for Education, through which she raises money for students pursuing higher education at historically Black colleges and universities. She also founded the African American Female Comedian Association. She signed a multi-year development deal with CBS Studios in 2022, and with The Talk now behind her, the next chapter of her career is still being written.
So who is Sheryl Underwood? She is a twin who never forgot her sister. A caregiver who still showed up for her dreams. A trailblazer who broke barriers in comedy before most people knew her name. A widow who grieved in silence for twenty years and then used that grief to help others. And a woman who has spent her entire life proving that where you start does not have to define where you end up.
