It’s Sherri Shepherd’s time at the prime-time bat. She’s acting alongside John Lithgow (who plays murder suspect Larry Henderson) in the new crime mockumentary for NBC, “Trial & Error.”
In the spirit of true crime documentaries, this obnoxious half-hour comedy features a bright-eyed New York lawyer Josh Segal (Nicholas D’Agosto), who heads to a town in South Carolina for his first big case to defend an eccentric poetry professor (Lithgow) accused of the bizarre murder of his beloved wife. The cast is rounded out by Jayma Mays (playing Carol Anne Keane); Steven Boyer (playing Dwayne Reed); and Krysta Rodriguez (playing Summer Henderson).
Shepherd plays Anne Flatch. “I’m a paralegal/legal receptionist/legal researcher. But I have a host of disorders — prosopagnosia, which is facial amnesia, 30-40,000 people are affected with it. I am dyslexic. I have short-term memory loss. I laugh inappropriately at serious situations. I have spindle syndrome, so I faint when I see beautiful artwork. I talk in my sleep. I drive when I am asleep. I walk backward when I get my flu shot; it’s called cheerleader syndrome. When I get anesthesia from the dentist, I speak in an English accent. I have alien hand syndrome, a neurological syndrome,” offers Shepherd, who worked as a legal secretary during her stand-up comedy days. “They are all real disorders. I thought it was so challenging when I read the script. I said, ‘Oh my god. To play this kind of character would be wonderful. I’ve done my research and I am on the Facebook chat groups for all the disorders.’ I was the first one cast. When they told me they were in negotiation with John Lithgow, I said, ‘I don’t care if I have to be on the pole …’ I want to do the best job that I can in this town.”
Having the capacity to type 102 words-per-minute, write shorthand and understanding legal jargon have manifested into a role that Shepherd believes is a godsend. “It’s every actor’s dream to be able to do something different. When I got the role, I called my friend Niecy Nash and said, ‘I got it. I think I got one that’s going to change it.’ She’s on ‘Getting On’ [HBO] and that was her big show. It was a game changer for my friend. For me, it was really challenging but based on the feedback from focus groups and the audience, my role was made bigger and I get more time with John Lithgow.”
There’s no live studio audience. It’s a single-camera show like “30 Rock.” “You really play the truth. Coming from a stand-up background and multi-camera background to a single camera, you are not playing the joke. We have really great actors from these backgrounds,” she avers. “It’s like ‘The Office’ but edgier. The hardest part for me are the confessionals because I am talking to cameras. We did 23-24 takes.”
Is this role most challenging of all?
“Yes. I came in with the hair and the lashes and they were like ‘no’ … I actually called Niecy crying because she went through the same thing, ‘They are making me take off my hair … I can’t wear makeup,’ ” Shepherd says Nash told her.
Shepherd, who endorses the Sherri Shepherd™ LUXHAIR™ wig collection, admits, “I was like, It’s [a] new age for me. I told them, ‘I am not taking off my makeup.’ Niecy said to me ‘change the conversation.’ I [curated] who I thought Ann Flatch would be. She dresses at Sears. She wears not even kitten heels. She wears clodhoppers. I couldn’t wait to get nails when this show wrapped. She wears basic makeup. As a matter of fact, when John Lithgow saw that, he didn’t even know it was me.”
Shepherd closes, “The writing is so yummy, the acting is so professional. I truly appreciate this project that people are really digging. I am grateful to work with an [award-winning] crew.”
Following the season finale of “This Is Us” on Tuesday, March 14, “Trial & Error” will debut at 10 p.m. EST.
