Looks like Sherri Shepherd‘s next View will be of a Broadway audience! The departing daytime talk show host revealed on Tuesday, Aug. 5, that she’ll be making her debut on the Great White Way opposite Broadway’s first African-American Cinderella, Keke Palmer, in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical this September.
Shepherd, 47, will join the cast as Madame, Cinderella’s evil stepmother, on Tuesday, Sept. 9, the same day Palmer, 20, puts on her glass slippers as Ella. She’ll replace the current Madame, Nancy Opel. (Shepherd showed off her vocal chops on The View in May, doing a fun karaoke rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”)
News of the View co-host’s casting comes hot on the heels of Palmer’s big announcement earlier this week. Like Shepherd, the Akeelah and the Bee alum will be making her Broadway debut, succeeding Paige Faure in the title role. She is the first African-American actress to play the part on the Great White Way, though not the first African-American Cinderella ever; pop singer Brandy famously starred opposite the late Whitney Houston, Shepherd’s View pal Whoopi Goldberg, and Bernadette Peters in a 1997 TV movie version of the musical.
“I feel like the reason I’m able to do this is definitely because Brandy did it on TV,” Palmer told the Associated Press of the fairy tale gig. “In me doing this, it shows everybody that everything is possible.”
The Just Keke host added, “Every girl’s dream is that story, so to be able to play [Cinderella] is going to be a dream come true for me. Not to mention that Stuart Weitzman made the glass slippers I’ll be wearing.”
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