Sheryl Lee Ralph on Smash, Playing Veronica Moore's Mother, and the Dreamgirls Legacy She Carries

Sheryl Lee Ralph said it plainly: "I wake up every day just trying to do the best I possibly can do in life. The same butt you kick today you may have to k…" — and Premier Guide Miami was in the room when it happened.

On February 19, 2013, NBC held a press conference call for Smash Season 2 in advance of Sheryl Lee Ralph's guest appearance as Cynthia Moore — the formidable mother of Jennifer Hudson's character Veronica — airing February 26. Premier Guide Miami's Daedrian McNaughton was on the call and asked Ralph two questions: about the challenges she had faced throughout her career, and about why she so often plays the matriarch. This is her full story from that call.

I wake up every day just trying to do the best I possibly can do in life. The same butt you kick today you may have to kiss tomorrow.

Cynthia Moore — Dominique Devereaux in Manolos

Ralph described Cynthia Moore as a woman so grounded in her own power that playing her was pure pleasure: "This is a woman who is so comfortable in her well-earned Manolo Blahniks that it is a joy just to get to play her." On set, one of the show's executives pulled her aside with a comparison: "The last time we saw a woman like this it was Dominique Devereaux." Dominique Devereaux was the iconic character played by Diahann Carroll on Dynasty . Ralph's reaction: "I take that as a supreme compliment." She added that she stirred in "a little bit of a momager or two that I've worked with just to make sure she had some authenticity."

Jennifer Hudson's flowers — and what she said

The moment Ralph described most vividly was arriving at her dressing room on the Smash set — a "tricked out warehouse in Queens" — and finding it filled with flowers. "Inside the room was the hugest, grandest, most beautiful arrangement of flowers I have ever seen. In fact they were so big that either the flowers had to go or I had to go." The card was from Jennifer Hudson. When Ralph went to thank her, Hudson's response stopped her: "Miss Ralph, you don't have to tell me thank you for anything because you are all that I ever really want to be." Ralph: "It healed so many of those little wounds that someone might have. This young woman gets it."

Dreamgirls — and wishing she had been on that set

The Dreamgirls thread ran through the entire call. Ralph originated the role of Deena Jones on Broadway; Hudson played Effie in the 2006 film. When a reporter asked whether they had talked about it, Ralph said yes: "She said, 'Miss Ralph I really wish you had been on that set. I really wish that you had been there.' And all I could do was say thank you for that, thank you — because heck I wish I had been there too myself." The show's evolution also came up: "Dreamgirls continued to change," Ralph said, drawing a parallel to how Smash unfolds — "the making of a Broadway show revealed to you in the drama of a television series. That's magic."

Daedrian's questions — challenges, and why she plays mothers

Earlier you said you've been shut out of things or had limited opportunities — has this always been a challenge for you throughout your career? And the second question: why do you feel you play such a strong role as mothers or as the matriarch over your career?

Well first let me answer that. I think because I've had an excellent example of a mother in my life and it's not just a mother as mentor — female mentors in my life. I often write in my book Redefining Diva the women that came before me were so wonderful in sharing what they had learned with me that it just helped me in ways that I see coming true now — about holding on in times of disappointment, celebrating in times of true happiness. Those are learned things. Those are learned choices, the choice to be happy no matter what is going on. I have a great mother in my own mother, a strong West Indian woman, Jamaican to be exact, and I had an incredible grandmother from the south. Both sides of my family were full of the most incredible women. So I really think my ideals of motherhood come from the mothers that have been placed in my life. Now in terms of facing challenges — life is full of challenges and as a woman just plain old woman there are always challenges in moving forward in life. But then often you talk about show business or business, any kind of enterprise period and you add color on top of it, it gets even harder. At the Image Awards they made so much out of the fact that Kerry Washington was the first Black female to star in a series on the network since Diahann Carroll and that was Julia. And if that's really the case, my God, it took my whole lifetime for that to happen.

The daughters she's played — and Instant Mom with Tia Mowry

A reporter asked Ralph to compare her role on Moesha to Cynthia Moore on Smash , and she turned it into a survey of the remarkable women she had played mother to: Lauryn Hill in Sister Act 2 , Brandy on Moesha , Jennifer Hudson on Smash , and — just wrapped — Tia Mowry in a new pilot called Instant Mom . "If you just consider the four of them it's an incredible group of young women." She described the Instant Mom premise: Mowry plays a party girl who marries a doctor and inherits three children; Ralph plays her mother. "I end up a mother with a daughter who has children because of course I am glamorous — I will never be grandmother."

Divas Simply Singing — and the Dreamgirls company lost to AIDS

When a reporter from the Windy City Times asked how Ralph had become so connected to the gay community, her answer went straight to Dreamgirls: "We immediately had a huge gay following. In many instances they were the backbone and the support of moving that musical forward." But the deeper bond came from loss: "There we were — Dreamgirls for me was like the best and the worst of all time — and in the best times you're singing and dancing with somebody on stage one night and the next night they'd be fighting for their life. I saw them die on the stigma, shame and silence because of AIDS." That experience led her to create Divas Simply Singing, now the longest consecutive running musical AIDS benefit in the country. "Of all the great things we've ever done, people hardly ever mention that we lost close to one-third of our original company to AIDS. Tom Eyen we lost him, Michael Peters we lost him." She also noted her previous work with Megan Hilty — who plays Ivy on Smash — on a workshop musical called It's On , and said the two were hoping to get it on its feet during Hilty's hiatus. Smash airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Eastern on NBC.

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