Loretta Devine spills the beans on her 2 'big fights' with Sheryl Lee Ralph

Loretta Devine has revealed why she and Sheryl Lee Ralph had two big fights during their Dreamgirls Broadway run.

The 75-year-old American actress spoke at Ralph’s Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony in Los Angeles and shared the story of the two “big fights” she and Ralph had during their performance in 1980s Dreamgirls.

Devine said, “Sheryl and I were roommates on Broadway, 1981, for four years. The first one was because I kept getting hit in the head by a flat [a wooden piece of scenery used in a play] because Sheryl Lee, I thought, wasn’t moving fast enough. We were in the line and she had to go [onstage] and she wasn’t going!”

“I was like, ‘She’s trying to kill me!’ Only to find out later that it was Zane, the stagehand. He would fall asleep and just let the flat fall wherever,” she jokingly added.

However, their second fight occurred when Ralph went on to get her dressing room painted “Pepto-Bismol pink.”

Reflecting on one promotional trip for the musical, the Family Reunion star quipped, “They had taken these new girls to L.A. here. They would not bring us.”

“Jennifer Holliday came. Debbie Burrell. They wouldn’t even let us come,” Devine added, referring to their cast members.

“On top of that, they sent pictures of this beautiful dressing room with a sofa that was pink, and Sheryl was determined to upgrade. And on top of that, every night we had to go down to the basement, downstairs to the basement, cross the basement stairs, go back up the stairs to the stage, and they had put a huge poster of the new girls in these skimpy outfits on the door,” she continued.

Notably, Ralph did not like “skimpy” promotional photos, as Devine said, “The picture vanished. Nobody knew what happened to the picture. One day, Sheryl Lee said, ‘Loretta, you wanna know what happened to the poster?’” 

“I was like, ‘Where’s the poster?’ There was a brick on the floor in front of the door. She moved the brick and there it was. It was like rolling away the stone in the Bible! I was amazed at how creative she was and to this day, I’m amazed at her ability to get things done. That’s Sheryl Lee Ralph: she was strong then, and she still is strong,” the Spell alum noted.