Tracee Ellis Ross is revisiting the years she spent starring on Girlfriends and questioning whether racism explains why the hit sitcom and its cast were repeatedly passed over by late-night television and major awards shows, despite strong ratings.
Appearing on the podcast What Now? with Trevor Noah, Ross recalled that during Girlfriends' eight-year run from 2000 to 2008, she was never booked on The Tonight Show, never appeared with David Letterman, and never attended the Emmys, according to The Daily Beast and Yahoo. "No Tonight Show, no David Letterman, no Emmys. Had never been to the Emmys," Ross said, according to both outlets.
Ross, who played sharp-witted attorney Joan Clayton on the UPN and later CW comedy, singled out a specific rejection from Jay Leno's Tonight Show. According to theJasmineBRAND and The Daily Beast, Ross said a booking inquiry on her behalf was met with the response: "We love Tracee. Call us when she gets something." Ross said she was baffled by the comment given that she was already the lead of a long-running, popular series. "I was like, I remember thinking, 'Get what? What else do you have to get?'" she recalled, per The Daily Beast. "I don't know. And it just was... 'We love her,' but it was not considered."
The snub stung more, Ross said, because she watched performers from lower-rated shows land the late-night appearances she was denied. She pointed specifically to Tony Shalhoub, star of the USA Network detective comedy Monk, as an example. "I remember specifically the show Monk. That show had a quarter of our viewership," Ross said, according to theJasmineBRAND. "And I remember seeing him on the show, and I was so confused. And I was like, I don't understand. Is it viewership?"
Ross said she was left without a clear explanation for the disparity, other than the uncomfortable possibility of racial bias. "The only thing you can boil it down to, you're like, 'Is it just racism?'" she said, according to both The Daily Beast and theJasmineBRAND. "I'm not sure how to — how do you categorize it? I don't know what it is."
Girlfriends premiered in 2000 and followed Joan and her circle of friends as they navigated careers, relationships, and adulthood in Los Angeles. Ross starred alongside Golden Brooks as Maya, Persia White as Lynn, and Jill Marie Jones as Toni Childs, with the four leads' contrasting personalities and approaches to love driving much of the show's comedy, according to The Daily Beast. The series aired first on UPN before moving to the CW for its final two seasons.
Despite its popularity and cultural footprint, Girlfriends received little formal industry recognition during its run. The Daily Beast reported that the show earned just one Emmy nomination in its history, a Cinematography nod for its third season, even as it racked up 29 NAACP Image Award nominations for its portrayal of Black women on television. The series never received a proper series finale after production was halted by the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike during its eighth season.
Girlfriends also proved influential well beyond its own run. The show launched a backdoor pilot for the spinoff The Game during its sixth season, and that series went on to run for nine seasons between 2006 and 2015 before being revived at Paramount+ for two additional seasons from 2021 to 2023, according to The Daily Beast.
The recognition Ross says she was denied during Girlfriends eventually arrived, but years later and on a different show. Ross said the first time she ever attended the Emmys was after she landed the role of Rainbow Johnson on Black-ish, according to theJasmineBRAND. That role brought Ross five consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, according to The Daily Beast. She has also picked up a Daytime Emmy nomination for her travel series, Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross.
The gap between Ross's experience on Girlfriends and her later career raises the question she posed herself on the podcast: whether ratings alone can explain why some shows and performers were embraced by the industry's biggest platforms while others, with larger audiences, were not. Ross did not offer a definitive answer, framing it instead as an open question she has carried since watching Monk's star get opportunities that never came her way despite Girlfriends' far larger viewership.
The Daily Beast noted it reached out to a representative for Leno for comment on Ross's remarks; no response had been reported at the time of publication. Girlfriends has continued to find new audiences since its original run ended, maintaining a loyal fanbase more than two decades after its 2000 premiere and cementing its place as one of the defining sitcoms centered on Black women's friendships, careers, and love lives.
Ross's comments arrive as she continues to reflect publicly on her career trajectory, from her early days on Girlfriends through her Emmy-nominated run on Black-ish and into her current work as a host and producer. Her willingness to name Leno specifically, rather than speak only in general terms about industry snubs, has drawn renewed attention to how awards bodies and late-night bookers treated Black-led sitcoms during the 2000s compared with their white-led counterparts airing at the same time.
