Tracee Ellis Ross has called out a late-night TV host for snubbing Girlfriends during the hit comedy’s eight-year run.
Appearing on Trevor Noah’s What Now? podcast, Ross spoke about how television was “very segregated” while Girlfriends was on the air.
During her time as lead actress on the show, Ross said she did “talk shows, no Tonight Show, no David Letterman, no Emmys — had never been to the Emmys.”
Ross remembered Jay Leno, who hosted The Tonight Show, allegedly saying, “We love Tracee. Call us when she gets something.”
“I was like, I remember thinking, ‘What?’ ” she continued. “Like, what else do you have to get? I don’t know.”
Ross also called out lesser-watched series for getting the late-night exposure denied to Girlfriends.
“I remember, specifically, the show Monk,” she told Noah. “That show had a quarter of our viewership. A quarter of our viewership.”
“I remember seeing him on the show, and I was so confused,” she continued of Monk star Tony Shalhoub. “And I was like, ‘I don’t understand. Is it viewership?’ And the only thing you can boil it down to, you’re like, ‘Is it just racism?’ I’m not sure how to — how do you categorize it? I don’t know what it is.”
Ross lauded her time on Girlfriends as her training ground as an actress.
“I became a seasoned actress,” Ross recalled. “You know, 173 episodes, you learn how to do it, and it’s different from movies, but it’s a real thing. You learn, you become a veteran. I had an opportunity to do 173 episodes of a show — it’s no joke.”
After Girlfriends, Ross was nominated for five consecutive Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Rainbow Johnson in Black-ish.
For a travel show, Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross, she received a Daytime Emmy nomination this year.