Sherri Shepherd revealed that she voted for the first time when she was on The View.
Appearing on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, Shepherd shared she became politically active after growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness.
“I was a Jehovah’s Witness, so I didn’t vote. I didn’t start voting until I got on The View,” Shepherd said.
Shepherd credits Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters for helping her to think for herself.
“[When] you feel like you fail … I feel like, don’t look at it as failure. Just get back up and fix or course correct,” she explained. “And for The View, I didn’t know anything about politics — I’d never voted before — and one time Barbara Walters said to me, ‘Dear, read a book.’”
“All I knew was what the church taught me. That’s what it was. I didn’t think for myself,” Shepperd continued. “What I realized is sometimes we have to get out of where we live. We have to go travel the world. We have to meet people that are different from us. Because when you don’t, that’s how you get prejudice and that’s how you get judgmental.”
Shepherd aslo recalled another time on The View when her co-hosts were discussing a topic. She said Goldberg asked her, “But what do you think? What do you think about that?”
“And I was like, ‘I don’t know,’” Shepherd said.
She said she was grateful to Joy Behar for helping her let go of the “weight of the world” for trying to represent everyone. Behar helped her understand that she wasn’t obligated to represent all Black people, women and Christians
“That’s a lot to carry,” she said. “And Joy Behar said to me, ‘Sherri, the moment you open your mouth, half the world is gonna hate you. So go by what you feel and what you think.’”