Sheryl Lee Ralph Says a Producer Fired Her From a TV Pilot for Not Being “Black Enough”

Sheryl Lee Ralph says that while working the ’80s, she was fired from a TV pilot after a producer deemed she wasn’t “Black enough.”

Speaking to People magazine, the Abbott Elementary star opened up about her decades-long career — which has spanned Broadway, television and film — and revealed that after being hired for a pilot, an unnamed producer fired her. “The producer told me I was ‘not Black enough,'” she recalls. “Those were his words. It was horrible. I can still remember the way I felt.”

Ralph then recounted the way the industry worked during the ’80s, with the actress also hearing from directors who were trying to define her race and racial experience for her as a Black woman. “People’s thinking was not very inclusive,” she explained. “You [had] directors who were still trying to tell you how to be Black.”

In an interview with The View in March, Ralph shared a different experience she had with a casting director, who implied that audiences wouldn’t want to see a Black woman romantically opposite a white male actor like Tom Cruise.

“I had a memorable audition with a big casting director who looked at me and said, ‘Everybody knows you’re a beautiful, talented, Black girl. But what do I do with a beautiful, talented, Black girl?” Ralph had told the co-hosts. “Do I put you in a movie with Tom Cruise? Do you kiss? Who goes to see that movie?'”

While Ralph declined to name the casting director, she said she “left that audition with some of the best ammunition.”

“Everybody knew I was a beautiful, talented, Black girl and I should be in the movies with the likes of a ‘Tom Cruise,’ and he should kiss me,” she said.