Sheryl Lee Ralph Reveals Her ‘Abbott Elementary’ Bit Mixing Up White Celebrities as Black Was Real: “I Made One Mistake!”

Sheryl Lee Ralph taught her Abbott Elementary character, Barbara Howard, a little of her own humor. The Emmy winner admitted that the bit about her character that mistakes white celebrities for black actually stems from her own slip, which creator Quinta Brunson secretly included in a recent episode.

During an appearance on Tuesday (October 25) on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Ralph revealed that her real-life mistake became fodder for an Abbott Elementary cold open that was featured on the September 28 episode “Wrong Delivery.”

After Barbara confused Brian Austin Green and Bryan Tyree Henry in the episode, Brunson’s character explains to Janine, “There’s a lot of white celebrities that Barbara thinks are black.”

It turns out both Barbara and Ralph think “a bunch of celebrities” are actually black, as Ralph himself admitted to hosting Kelly Clarkson.

“I made a mistake!” She said, before delving further into the origin of the joke, “I just want to say, when you hear the name Darren Star, tell me you don’t think of a seven-foot-tall basketball player. Now you know Darren Star sounds black. Thanks very much! I have got it wrong.”

Star is in fact the white creator of Sex and the City and Emily in Paris, but Ralph makes a compelling case. She also admitted another mistake, telling Clarkson: “Now you know Orlando Bloom. Tell me you’re not thinking of a nice football player with bruises, black man. Okay, so I got it wrong. It was the wrong Orlando.”

Brunson, who joined Ralph and co-star Lisa Ann Walter on Clarkson’s show, chimed in, “And it was fun!”

Clarkson, herself an American Idol alumnus, told Ralph her favorite line from the episode was “Look at that little Carrie Underwood!”. when Barbara was actually going to say Kerry Washington.

“That was so good,” Ralph agreed.

Explaining how the play came about, Brunson told Clarkson, “It was really funny for us at that moment because since I was in my room, we didn’t understand the logic of how Sheryl saw it. We thought, so wait, is it black actors that she thinks is white, or is it just a mix-up of names? And I was like, what if it’s all, and we can give that to Barbara and it’ll be fine.”

Ralph threw up her hands and said, “Everyone seemed to love it.”

But Walter recalled that Ralph was initially not very pleased with the joke, and mimicked her colleague’s reaction when she first read her lines.

“The day she opened the script and read it, the day [of] On the table, she literally said, ‘Quinta,'” Walter said with a click of his tongue. But Clarkson came to Brunson’s defense, telling her, “You can’t offer that kind of material and just let it go to waste. That’s great.”

Abbott Elementary airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on ABC. Watch Clarkson’s interview in the video above and fast forward to the 10:20 mark to hear Ralph’s comments.