Elaine Welteroth on Meeting Cicely Tyson; She ‘spoke to my soul’; Sheryl Underwood Says Her Passing Felt ‘like my mother had died’ + Gayle King Discusses Final Interview
Monday on “The Talk” host Elaine Welteroth reflects on meeting the legendary Cicely Tyson at a Vanity Fair Oscar Party. “Somehow, I ended up being introduced to Cicely Tyson. I don’t know what it was, but she just grabbed my hands and said sit down baby, and it must have been 45 minutes. It felt like an eternity. But we sat there hand in hand, like this close, locked together, and she told me stories about her life. She gave me advice. She, like, spoke to my soul…At the end, she said I would really love to continue this conversation with you.” Welteroth adds, “I deeply regret, I just never called her. And two years have gone by, and when I saw she was going to be on the show, I thought this is my chance to tell her what that meant to me and now I have the courage, and now we’re going to have this friendship.” Continuing she adds, “I desperately regret that I never picked up the phone and called her, but now I feel I have a direct line. She’s now one of our ancestors. I’m going to be calling on her daily.”
Host Sheryl Underwood pays tribute to Cicely Tyson, reflects on her time on “The Talk” and her passing. “It was like my mother had died,” says Sheryl Underwood. “When she came here, she treated us like we were part of her family. And we had so much respect for her and we wanted to hear everything that she had to say. She had this powerful dignity and this residence, this regalness to her. And, you know, when somebody comes to interview here, we only have a short time with them. Sometimes we don’t get to say everything we want to say to them. But, when the message got back to me that she was coming back and that one of the producers said, ‘Sheryl, she loves you,’ and I was wondering if she knew all of us as little girls loved her – as a model, as an actress, to be chocolate, to be mahogany, to be in your own hair, to be whoever you are. I mean, for me, to be on ‘Guiding Light’ in 1966 as Martha Frazier and to me, the role I loved the most as the queen in the movie ‘Hoodlum’ with Laurence Fishburne and Vanessa Williams and she had that dignity to her. This is a hard day that I did not want to face.” She adds, “To everyone who’s ever been in her presence, you need to cherish what she poured into you and respect that and then carry it on.”
