Yahoo News Sheryl Lee Ralph Gets Emotional Recalling Her Childhood Bullies: 'They Used to Call Me Ugmo' (Exclusive)
In her PEOPLE cover story, the 'Abbott Elementary' star gets candid about the adversity she faced as a kid and how she never let anything stop her
Words hurt Sheryl Lee Ralph going up, but she never let them stop her.
Born in Waterbury, Conn., to Ivy, a Jamaican fashion designer, and Stanley, a college professor, the Abbott Elementary star, 69, tells PEOPLE in her cover story that she vividly recalls her peers bullying her and calling her “the ugly one,” growing up.
“They used to call me ‘ugmo’ and make fun of my hair, my lips, the way I talked," she says, growing emotional at the thought. "It used to hurt me. I used to think to myself, ‘Why do they have to be so mean?’ But I’m the kind of person, I’m going to move past it.”
Ralph says her fighting spirit came from assessing the world around her. “I’m a little Black girl from the ’60s, are you kidding me? You better have drive. They were blowing up Girl Scouts. They were fire-hosing children,” she says of atrocities during the Civil Rights Movement. “When you see children that look like you being killed, you better know how to carry on and have persistence.”
Related: Sheryl Lee Ralph Reflects on Finding Major Success in Her 60s: 'The Best Is Yet to Come' (Exclusive)
A member of the first class of women to attend Rutgers College in New Jersey, she was encouraged by her mother to pursue medicine or law, but neither was her speed. “I tried being a doctor. When they delivered that huge hare on a silver tray and a scalpel, I said, ‘I am not dissecting the Easter Bunny. Not happening.’ So I went and I tried law. I think I’m probably the only student that walked out on a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg, because I could not take that constitutional law class,” she recalls.
Shortly after, she walked into an audition at the campus theater. There she found her calling and quite literally made a name for herself. “I said, ‘I’m Sheryl Ralph. No, Sheryl Lee Ralph.’ I got the lead.”
As she successfully pursued acting there were plenty of powerful voices around to drown out the negative comments she'd heard as a child. "Maya Angelou said, 'Sheryl Lee Ralph, when I hear you speak, I know everything I went through has been worth it,'" she recalls of the late great poet and author.
Similarly she recalls legends Sidney Poitier and Cicely Tyson singing her praises, with the latter once stopping to tell her, "Many great things are going to happen to you. Many, many, many." Says Ralph, “The elders have been good to me, and they would not be surprised.”
As they foretold, the star spent decades lighting up stage and screen before experiencing the career renaissance she's in now, thanks to her Emmy-winning role as veteran educator Barbara Howard on Abbott Elementary. Looking back, Ralph couldn't be prouder of her resilience and of her ability to love and stay true to herself.
"Suppose I'd listened to all the things that people said to me when I was young. Probably if I had access, I'd have changed my whole face because they told me I was ugly," she says, "All I needed was time. All I needed to do was grow up. All I needed to do is grow into who I am becoming still. If I changed one thing, it might've all been very different for me."
Read the original article on People
