ET caught up with the NAACP Image Award-nominated actress on Thursday.
Keesha Sharp is rooting for a Girlfriends reboot!
The Lethal Weapon star would love to reunite with her former cast members and the timing could be perfect. This year marks a decade since the weekly sitcom co-starring Sharp, Tracee Ellis Ross, Golden Brooks, Jill Marie Jones, Persia White and Reginald C. Hayes aired its final episode.
“I would love it! Look at all the shows that are coming back and they’re doing well,” Sharp told ET during a phone interview on Thursday. “I don’t know if we could do [a full series] but at least a movie like Sex and the City. Why can’t we do that? That would be fun! I would love to see where these characters ended up and where they are now.”
Girlfriends, which was created by Mara Brock Akil, premiered in 2000 on the UPN network and ran for eight seasons. Sharp, who played Monica Charles on the show, joined the series in season three first as Dent’s (played by Hayes) girlfriend and later his wife.
Despite moving on to separate successful projects, the cast still manages to keep in touch. "Some of us are in contact more than others, but we all stay in contact on social media," Sharp explained. “I’m always checking them and wishing them good luck and are really proud of their accomplishments. I talk to Jill. A lot of us have moved and have a lot of other things going on, but we’re still friends.”
Just as Girlfriends (one of the few network shows at the time that was led by women of color) touched on several issues that women face in the workplace and in their personal lives, Hollywood is experiencing a shift to end misogynistic culture with help from the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. And Sharp can’t wait to see what the future holds.
“The one thing that I love is that women have always been fighting this fight of sexual harassment in the workplace or more, but what I like that’s happening now is I feel like there’s a unity that’s happening within women,” Sharp said. “We’re always fighting our battles on our own, but we can do it so much better together. And so that’s what I feel is happening. Real change is going to happen, not just us talking about it and then another week we’re talking about something else because our attention spans are so short."
"With more women getting involved and fighting the fight, I think we’re going to make some real changes and I’m excited about that," she continued. "And not just with sexual harassment, that’s a huge part of it, but another part of it is that we’re not paid the same. We’re not given the same opportunities. It’s getting better, but when you look at the directors in our industry, most of them are men. Most of them are white men, so it’s a change that’s happening slowly. Women, we get stuff done. [With] us standing together [against] harassment, which needs to happen, [there's no telling] what we can we do to stand together and change more things. That’s going to be exciting."
Portraying strong women has become a specialty of Sharp’s, who played Johnnie Cochran’s wife on The People v. OJ. Simpson: American Crime Story, and Thurgood Marshall’s wife in the film Marshall, the latter of which earned her an NAACP Image Award nomination for best supporting actress.
On Lethal Weapon, Sharp plays Tish Murtaugh, wife of Roger Murtaugh (played by Damon Wayans). This season, viewers will watch Sharp’s character’s transition from quitting her job as a “high-powered defense attorney” and taking a corporate law position where she makes “10 times” more money, but may not be as happy.
Lethal Weapon airs on Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.
