Nia v Sherri (probably)

During yesterday’s taping of her talk show, Sherri Shepherd spilled some piping hot tea about a spat she reportedly got into at the Othello premiere with an “unnamed celebrity”. 

Sherri recounted the incident to her audience, saying that she was taken by the arm, spun around to face the person confronting her and told that she had been “shading” the unnamed person “a lot lately”, which she denied, both on the show in her retelling and during the incident. Sherri revealed that she was left feeling shaken and pissed off at the encounter. She said she went to the ladies’ room and spent 15 minutes in there, prepared to get the issue resolved (read: whoop some ass if she needed to).

Naturally, internet sleuths did what they do best and it wasn’t long before rumours started circulating that the “unnamed celebrity” was actually a BIG name celebrity, none other than our True and Faithful Queen Nia Long. Which begs the question – what in the holy f-ck is Sherri doing having beef with one of the most unproblematic people in Hollywood? 

To be clear, I am a Nia Long stan. And according to the comment section on just about every post highlighting this bullsh-t, so is everyone else. And their mother. And their grandma, too. There is just something about her that is so lovable, so admirable and so respectable – and a lot of that has to do with how much she has stayed out of mess over the course of her career. She has worked hard and remained humble, which is why people are responding to this beef, sharing sentiments like these:

It’s clear that people are having a hard time believing that she would be involved in anything, let alone something like this. But after a few hours of confusion, with some people flat out refusing to believe that Nia would ever accost someone at a premiere, she shared a post to Instagram that raised more questions than it did provide any answers or clarity about whether she was, in fact, guilty as not charged, seeing as Sherri never gave any names. 

It’s the kissy face emoji for me. I mean, I think it’s safe to say that if someone sends you this emoji from now on it translates to “And I’ll do it again, bitch.”

While I hate to see women fighting (well, outside of a reality TV setting, anyway), I do hate to see Black women fighting each other. I just feel like there’s already so many forces working against us in the industry and we’re so much stronger together. However, I sense that post-divorce, stunning in SKIMS and keeping her foot on the gas at 54 with her acting career, Nia is in the trenches of her IDGAF era. Posting that photo, and particularly the kissy face, was either a confession, a so what? if you will. Or, it was her way of saying, “It wasn’t me, but it could’ve been. FAFO.”

Despite me personally never having been in a fight before, which is surprising because I certainly have a mouth, I do always fantasize about getting into a confrontation like the one Sherri described. One that doesn’t render anyone hospitalized, one where nothing too serious comes about, but certainly a confrontation that lends me the opportunity to post a shady ass photo on social media and without having to say much, to let my opponent, and everyone else know what type of time I’m on.

There are a few people (like, two, maybe) coming to Sherri’s defence, questioning the pile-on and the immediate siding with Nia. Some people have even started digging through past episodes of her show trying to find instances where Nia may have felt shaded by Sherri, which led to the resurfacing of this clip, which, as this X user suggested, really isn’t shady at all.

Truthfully, I don’t think Sherri stacks up to Nia. But I can’t deny the success of her show. She’s got a pretty solid audience and ranks pretty high in viewership for the 25-54 audience. For a period of time, her show was the second-most watched daytime talk show among women in that age group.

But I think a lot of that success has to do with the fact that she took the spot of none other than the legendary Queen of Mess and Tea, Wendy Williams. And I think she’s trying to fill shoes that are impossibly difficult to fill, and she’s trying to do that by talking about mess like this. And if we’re keeping it a buck, since launching her show in 2022, this is the most I’ve seen her show discussed on social media and certainly in the headlines, except for recently when she became emotional during an interview with Jonathan Majors which did her no favours with her Black fanbase, considering that a lot of Black people simply don’t claim him, particularly after recent audio was leaked in which he admitted to ‘aggressing’ his ex, Grace Jabbari. 

In addition to that, Sherri recently went on a long tangent on her show about how Megan Thee Stallion and a few other women are bad influences on young girls over their outfit choices after award season. This X user put this into good context, particularly in relation to her tearing up over Jonathan Majors:

So though some may feel like Nia attracting so much support in this non-confirmed beef is unfair to Sherri, it appears she was well on her way to isolating herself from her fans with her unpopular takes and anti-Meg slander – and she did that on her own. But these are only some of the reasons people are siding with Nia. 

In addition to all that, there’s the fact that, as others on social have alluded to, this is very atypical for Nia. She didn’t even drag her dirty ass ex-man’s name through the mud even though he deserved it. I certainly had thoughts on him, though, and you can read them here.

Second, Nia is very much an icon and legend in Black Hollywood. By starring in some of the most iconic and nostalgic Black movies as characters we mostly love, adore and respect (we love you Jordan!) there are blurred lines between her characters and Nia in real life – that casting has actually benefitted her in a lot of ways. 

Perhaps most importantly, Nia is representing for those of us who remain unproblematic, but have simply had enough of the bullsh-t. The ones who have stayed silent for most of our lives, but recently started not giving a f-ck. So often, we’ve sat and watched talk show hosts and radio personalities say some pretty damning things about celebrities, only to never be confronted. And now we’re all seeing how satisfying it is to finally see someone’s feet be held to the fire.