The things people have to encounter throughout their lives are sometimes surprising. One such case is actress Sheryl Lee Ralph admitting to having to deal with being approached by a “famous TV judge” who “rammed his nasty-ass tongue down” her throat earlier in her career.
The Abbott Elementary actor appeared earlier this week on Angela Yee’s radio show, Way Up With Angela Yee, recalling a situation that mortified her—sharing her experience with an unwanted advance that
studio executives witnessed. She did not go into detail about who, when, or where the incident took place. She did make sure to state that the judge she was referring to was not Judge Greg Mathis.“I’m at a very public place. I was suited. I had my suit on. I was handling my business for the television show I was on at that time. He and I were on the same network. This man walked in, grabbed me by the back of my neck, turned me around, and rammed his nasty ass tongue down my throat,” Ralph alleges. “And everybody at the network saw it.”
She also stated that she reached out to the then-mayor of New Orleans, Marc Morial, and he suggested calling the police, but a network executive stopped her.
“Somebody at the network tapped me on the shoulder; they said, ‘Please don’t,’” Ralph recalled. “Do you know that they did not want any bad press around their show and did not care what had just happened to me?”
As she continued speaking about the incident, she said the executives told her it “wasn’t really that bad.”
“That’s the kind of stuff that happens. That’s what happens; that’s what makes it hard for women to speak up about these things.”
She advises women to stay alert and, if someone invites them to their hotel
room in the middle of the night, to not go. But, she did admit that she went against her own advice with one particular professional basketball player. She stated that she was invited to Michael Jordan’s hotel room late one night and went. But, instead of any sexual activity, she said they played backgammon and talked about their families, and a good friendship developed out of that. She reiterated that they didn’t have sex.