Cape Town – American actress and singer Jenifer Lewis has candidly reflected on some of the most challenging chapters of her life, opening up about childhood trauma, sex addiction and living with bipolar disorder during a recent appearance on actress Keke Palmer’s Baby, This Is Keke Palmer podcast.
The actress, best known for her role as Ruby Johnson in Black-ish, shared how years of emotional pain and personal struggles shaped the woman she has become. Known as the self-proclaimed “Mother of Black Hollywood”, Lewis said she has no regrets about being transparent about her past.
“I have no secrets. There is no shame in my game.”
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Lewis explained that she laid bare her life story in her book, including her childhood trauma, addictions and the hardships she endured over the years.
One of the most striking revelations from the interview was her admission that she had slept with 63 men before recognising that sex had become an addiction.
“I slept with 63 men… I wish I had known that my body was a temple. I didn’t know it then. I know it now.”
She said she did not realise at the time that her behaviour stemmed from addiction. Instead, sex became a way of coping with the emotional high she experienced after performing on Broadway.
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Lewis described the exhilaration of being on stage and the emptiness she often felt once the curtain came down.
“When you get off a Broadway stage and all that ovation and applause… what are you gonna do?”
She explained that many people turned to substances to come down from that emotional high, while she sought comfort elsewhere.
“You’re going to either go stick something in your arm, you’re going to go smoke some, you’re going to drink something to come down from that high. I used to just go find a gorgeous man.”
“I would have sex. Sex was the drug.”
Lewis said her perspective on life changed dramatically during the AIDS epidemic, which claimed the lives of many people she knew.
“It wasn’t until life got real and the AIDS epidemic hit where I went, ‘Wait a minute.'”
She recalled questioning the direction of her life and searching for a deeper sense of purpose.
“There’s got to be more to life than just me clawing at the void of who am I and what am I.”
“Let’s go find out who you are. Let’s go find out where you belong. Let’s go find out why you came here. Let’s go find out what love is. Let’s go do the work.”
The actress also spoke about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder after suffering a nervous breakdown in the early 1990s, following the devastating loss of hundreds of friends and acquaintances during the AIDS crisis.
“I had a nervous breakdown. I went down after all the deaths from AIDS.”
Reflecting on that period, Lewis said the constant loss was overwhelming.
“I’d known 200 people that had died. You’d come home and three would be dead. You’d come home and five would be dead on the phone machine. It didn’t make sense because we were too young to experience that kind of death, that young, we were in our 20s for God’s sake.”
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Picture: Instagram/ Jenifer Lewis
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Compiled by Glaan Sibuyi
