Hollywood Flashback: Sheryl Lee Ralph Served Up Laughs on ‘It’s a Living’

Decades before Sheryl Lee Ralph became an Emmy-winning scene stealer on Abbott Elementary, she was serving up expertly timed laughs on another workplace sitcom.

It’s a Living debuted on ABC in 1980. Boasting an excellent pedigree — it was executive produced by Paul Junger Witt (Soap, The Golden Girls) — the show was set in a fictional restaurant called Above the Top, filmed inside the real (and still operational) Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. It followed a group of wisecracking waitresses and their mercurial maître d’ boss (Marian Mercer) through their professional and personal lives. Despite cast chemistry and sharp writing, the show was a ratings dud. The showrunners recast several roles and renamed it Making a Living for its second season. While THR‘s October 1981 review called it a “solid sitcom with some sturdy jokes derived from fairly well-realized characterizations,” it was canceled at the end of that season.

But when reruns started performing well in syndication, It’s a Living was revived in 1985 with some casting tweaks. Breakout star Ann Jillian lasted one year in the new version before being sidelined with a much-publicized breast cancer battle. (She beat the disease and is alive and well at 75.) And in 1986, a then-29-year-old Ralph — already nominated for a Tony in 1982 for her role in Broadway’s Dreamgirls — landed her first series regular gig, debuting the upbeat Ginger St. James in the show’s fourth season. Ralph stayed with the show until its sixth and final season in 1989, before finding a new generation of fans playing stepmother and high school principal to Brandy Norwood on Moesha, which ran on UPN from 1996 to 2001 and earned Ralph five NAACP Image Award nominations. Ralph’s portrayal of kindergarten teacher Barbara Howard on Abbott Elementary has earned her three supporting actress Emmy nominations, and her win in 2022 made her the second Black woman to earn the award after 227‘s Jackée Harry in 1987.

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.