Sherri Shepherd Plays Pregnancy Prank For April Fools’ Day

Sherri Shepherd took her April Fools’ Day antics to theatrical new heights after making a jaw-dropping “announcement.” During Tuesday’s (April 1) episode of Sherri, the charismatic host pressed pause on the show to deliver what seemed like an emotional confession. With her voice trembling and eyes welling up, she set the scene for an unbelievable revelation.

“This is one of the hardest things that I’ve had to say to everybody,” she began, with the weight of her words leaving her audience gasping. “I come on this show and I tell y’all everything. I’m very, very transparent about everything.” Then, in a moment so convincing it could have won her an award, she let the news drop: “I went to the doctor yesterday… and I just wanted to share this with y’all ’cause it’s gonna come out… I went to the doctor yesterday and I was telling him all these symptoms that I was feeling. They ran all these tests, and he came back and the doctor told me… He said, ‘Sherri, I think that you’re pregnant.’”

The studio erupted in a cacophony of shock, applause, and audible disbelief, with even her executive producer, Jawn Murray, yelling out, “Oh lord!” The display TV then showed an ultrasound and a positive pregnancy test behind her. But before the suspense could escalate further, Shepherd broke out of character, unable to maintain the prank any longer.

“Okay, I can’t even do it,” she finally admitted, surrendering to laughter. “I can’t even do it! April Fools, y’all!” Murray clutched his chest in mock distress, adding, “You should feel my heart palpitations. Can someone bring me my blood pressure medicine, please?”

Shepherd then revealed that the prank had been her way of flexing her acting skills — though she had to cut it short, fearing she might “manifest” a pregnancy into existence. Murray quipped, “I blame Taraji. Ever since you been hanging with Taraji shooting that Tyler Perry movie, you been crying on spot. I’m mad at Taraji now.”

For those who might have still been clutching their pearls, Shepherd wasted no time setting the record straight. “That’s April Fools, I just wanna clarify,” she said firmly. “The reason I came up with it was because I told everyone last week [that] the doctor told me I’m still in perimenopause… Let me tell you something, if they told me I was pregnant, I would curl up in a ball in a fetal position.”

With the crowd chuckling in applause, she threw in there, “And I don’t know what y’all clapping for. I do have to say, the majority of y’all was like, ‘Oh, god!’ So to clarify: Not pregnant. No, no, no.”

Just last week, Shepherd candidly shared her frustrations about her perimenopause journey and the unexpected reality that she could still conceive. “When she said perimenopause, I thought that she meant I was being very demure and mindful — in perimenopause — because I thought I was handling menopause well,” she recalled of her doctor while shaking her head. “I don’t know what this is. I [have to] hurry up and get to post-menopause because I’m heated and defeated.”

Shepherd left the women in her audience with one final warning: “Ladies, don’t let the age fool [you], ‘cause you can still get pregnant.”

See Sherri Shepherd pranking her audience below.