In spring 2020, as the world hunkered down at home, comedians, actresses and longtime friends Sherri Shepherd (Sherri) and Kym Whitley (Act Your Age) decided to bring some laughter to the masses via their podcast, Two Funny Mamas.
Every Thursday, fans are graced with a fresh hour of this dynamic duo chatting about motherhood, dating, life and everything in between. Now, Shepherd and Whitley are taking their raw and unfiltered conversations on the road with Two Funny Mamas Live, which hits Parx Casino’s Xcite Center, 2999 Street Road, Bensalem, on Saturday, May 20, at 8 p.m. Two Funny Mamas Live features individual stand-up routines from both women, along with the two of them on-stage riffing about current events, telling stories and answering questions from audience members. Tickets are available at sherrishowtv.com/tour/.
Ahead of the show, The Times caught up with Shepherd, who shared details about the creation of the podcast, her bond with Whitley and more.
Lower Bucks Times: How does it feel to be doing these shows with Kym Whitley?
Sherri Shepherd: Oh my God, it feels so great because I’ve known Kym for so long and so, to actually be on the road with her as a continuation of our Two Funny Mamas podcast, we already know we’re gonna be having a lot of fun.
Lower Bucks Times: Have you guys toured together before?
Sherri Shepherd: This is our first time going on the road. We did a show in Saint Louis and sold out the theater. So this is actually our second time going out of LA to do an event.
Lower Bucks Times: Ah, that’s so exciting! The show that I’m covering, it’s in Bensalem at Parx Casino. Have you been to the Philly suburb area at all?
Sherri Shepherd: We have not, this is our first time, so we’re very excited to come.
Lower Bucks Times: Can you share a bit of what people can expect from the show, from your individual sets and also when you guys come together?
Sherri Shepherd: You know, it’s funny, we made this podcast Two Funny Mamas and we just get together. We’re two single mamas talking about life, trying to raise our sons, trying to date and nothing has come together yet. And that’s literally what we get on stage and talk about, the fact that we are out of the pandemic and our lives are still a pandemic-lived life. And nothing has come together for us yet. But the one thing that we can do is laugh about it.
Lower Bucks Times: For people who come to this show, do you think that people who maybe aren’t a mother or parent, they’ll still find humor?
Sherri Shepherd: Yeah, because you don’t have to be a mother. If you’re single, you’re gonna find humor in being single and trying to date, find humor in just life in general. We’ll take you on a journey no matter who you are.
Lower Bucks Times: I know this tour stemmed from the podcast. Can you walk me through how and when you and Kym decided to start the podcast?
Sherri Shepherd: Sure! Well now, we’re going into our fourth year. Oh, my goodness. So, I have to say four years ago, I was just bugging Kym. I had bugged Kym for three years. I said, ‘Let’s do a podcast, let’s do a podcast,’ and she didn’t want to because she was so busy and my agents and managers were like, ‘Let’s go to another comedian.’ And while I get along with everybody, I knew that I could only do this podcast with Kym Whitley because we have such a chemistry, such a groove. And she finally said, ‘Yes.’ And I just remember Kevin Hart was talking to us about producing it. Jamie Foxx was talking to us about producing it and then all of a sudden, COVID happened and then we were banned to our home. So I found all of the equipment that we needed and we each did it from our house. We got so many followers that said, ‘Thanks for getting us through this whole pandemic, just keeping us laughing,’ that we decided to stay with it even after the pandemic. Two NAACP Image Awards later, we’re still doing it.
Lower Bucks Times: How does it feel that it’s so successful and it’s gotten these awards, and people are just resonating with it?
Sherri Shepherd: You know, it feels great because we didn’t set out to do that, to get awards. We just set out to have fun and to be able to make people laugh for an hour or two hours, one time we did three hours just to make people laugh, to get them out of whatever they were feeling at the time. And so the fact that it has just continued to grow and, even in our being very unstructured, it’s just like, ‘Wow,’ that people are relating to our brand of comedy.
Lower Bucks Times: I know you guys have a ton of episodes at this point. But do you have a favorite moment or just something that happened that really stuck with you?
Sherri Shepherd: We have so many moments that are just absolutely amazing. I think we have over 200 episodes of our podcast that we have done. But one of the funniest ones was, Kym and I got into a big argument. We were doing stand-up in LA and I was supposed to headline, and Kym went up and did way too much time and she stole some of my jokes. You talk to comics, you don’t be taking people’s jokes.
And Kym was like, ‘I didn’t steal your joke. I borrowed it.’ And I went, ‘No, you stole it!’ So we had George Lopez, Wanda Sykes, Craig Shoemaker and Russell Peters come on and give us their opinion on if it was stolen or it was borrowed. And that’s one of the ones that we commended for the NAACP Image Awards, and we won based on that one. And it was so funny because all of the comics, we all know these comics and they all had a different take on it.
And if they took Kym’s side, I was mad. I still don’t even know if I’m talking to Wanda Sykes. And if they took my side, Kym was mad. And I think Russell Peters took my side and we are friends for life. But to have the top comics come in and weigh in on our, ‘Did you steal it or did you borrow it?’… But every comic that came on said, ‘You still should remain friends.’ But then I said, ‘So let her steal my stuff?,’ and then we were back to one.
Lower Bucks Times: How did you guys meet in the first place? I know you’ve been friends for some time now.
Sherri Shepherd: We’ve been friends for just over 30 years. We met at the comedy club and at the time, Kym was booking all of the commercials, you always saw Kym in a commercial and she was just like a presence. She would walk in a room, as she does now, and light it up. And I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I wanna be her friend,’ and we just really hit it off. We lived across the street from each other. We were both struggling comics and struggling actresses. She found furniture, I had none in my apartment. It was completely empty. And so we just took a liking to each other. Kym showed me how to wear my first wig and when to take it off in front of a man, and we’ve just been friends from there.
Lower Bucks Times: And now you’re touring together!
Sherri Shepherd: Now we’re touring together. Before I moved to New York to do my show Sherri, literally I lived five minutes away from Kym. So she would come to my house at all hours of the night, throwing stuff in my yard because she needed me to leave stuff at her house. So all of a sudden my alarm would go off because she was throwing stuff over my gate. I would show up at her house and, you know, we gave parties together and during the pandemic, she has a tennis court, but she turned it into Whitley on Wheels, and we would roller skate. So going from struggling comic, now she has a tennis court. And everytime I go over there, I’ll throw a party and forget to tell her. Like, I just had a birthday party, totally forgot to tell her. She’s like, ‘Why are all these people that I don’t know on my tennis court in my backyard?’ And I said, ‘I thought you were out of town. I really did. I still have a key. Sorry.’
Lower Bucks Times: Do you see yourselves continuing this podcast, as long as you have content and the people want it?
Sherri Shepherd: Yes. As long as the people want it, we will still be there because a lot of times we have thought about just kind of shutting it down. But then our fans go, ‘No, please. We need this.’ And it’s so great, in all parts of the world, there were people from China, from Nigeria, from Kuwait, Australia, who say, ‘Your podcast gets me through my depression.’ So as long as our fans want the craziness, we’ll give them the craziness.
Lower Bucks Times: And is there a certain day of the week that it comes out?
Sherri Shepherd: We always have a new episode on Thursday.
Lower Bucks Times: Is it hard to stay on top of that? Because I know Kym is busy and you have your talk show now, which is super exciting.
Sherri Shepherd: Yes, it’s really difficult because our schedules are so busy. Kym is an actress, she’s got 12 different projects at one time. I just have my TV show and it’s draining. And we did a Mother’s Day episode and both of us were mad. I was mad at [my son] Jeffrey because it was a sucky Mother’s Day. She was mad at [her son] Joshua because she had to headline at Jimmy Kimmel’s Comedy Club in Vegas and she had an entire weekend planned for her. And so Joshua, he acted up right before they were gonna go, she left him in LA because she still had to perform and he was cutting up so bad. And so when we did this podcast, I had no makeup on looking like the gardener and she was in her hotel room with horrible lighting, and even through us talking about, ‘This is the day for the sucky Happy Mother’s Day people,’ it was still so funny.
Lower Bucks Times: And that’s got to be therapeutic because you guys can kind of compare notes like, ‘Oh, my son did this,’ and I’m sure there’s fans commenting that they’re in a similar situation.
Sherri Shepherd: Exactly. And a lot of times we’ll go live and we get so many fans who love it and they will comment on it and they get involved, very interactive. We love doing the podcast.
Lower Bucks Times: Is there anything else upcoming about the podcast or just in general that you wanted people to know about?
Sherri Shepherd: No, we’re good! We’re just really excited to come to Bensalem and meet our fans, and just watch out for more dates on SherriShowTV.com.
Samantha Bambino can be reached at [email protected]
