Ryan Seacrest Talks Dick Clark: "I Was Always in Awe of Him"

Ryan Seacrest was getting ready for last night's live taping of American Idol when he heard the news that his longtime friend and mentor Dick Clark had died.
"He was such a good friend," Seacrest tells E! News' Giuliana Rancic today. "He was a teacher to me and I felt like a student. I was always in awe of him, just wanted to please him every time I got a chance to work with him."
Seacrest recalled being "so scared" when Clark invited him to cohost New Year's Rockin' Eve with him in 2005, a year after Clark suffered a stroke and missed his only countdown in 32 years.

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Sherri Shepherd

Sherri Evonne Shepherd (born April 22, 1967) is an American comedienne, actress, and television personality. She is one of five co-hosts on the ABC daytime talkshow, The View, as well as being the current host of the Newlywed Game and having a recurring role as Angie Jordan on the NBC series 30 Rock. As an actress, she has starred in the sitcom Less Than Perfect and her own sitcom Sherri on Lifetime.

Early life

Shepherd was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Lawrence A. Shepherd (b. 1943) and LaVerne Shepherd (1941–1991),[1] as the eldest of three sisters. When she was 11, her family moved to Hoffman Estates, a Chicago northwest suburb. She attended Winston Churchill Elementary School and Eisenhower Junior High School of Community Consolidated School District 54 and Hoffman Estates High School of District 211.

Acting

Shepherd worked a day job as a legal secretary while doing stand-up comedy at night. Her first TV role was on the show, Cleghorne!, starring former Saturday Night Live cast member Ellen Cleghorne. Three years later, Shepherd pursued acting and stand-up comedy full-time, working again as a legal secretary for a day job. She had guest and recurring roles on Everybody Loves Raymond and Living Single as well as regular roles on Suddenly Susan and The Jamie Foxx Show. Perhaps her most successful role prior to The View was playing the main character of Ramona Platt (2002–2006) on the comedy Less than Perfect. She is currently starring in Lifetime Television's Sherri, a sitcom about Shepherd's life.
Shepherd has branched out to film, with roles in Guess Who, Beauty Shop, Cellular, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Academy Award winning film Precious. Her most recent film role is as Lula in "One for the Money" starring Katherine Heigl. She still performs stand-up comedy at Los Angeles area clubs like the Comedy Store and the Laugh Factory, although she lives in New York. She has also been a frequent and popular guest on Ellen DeGeneres's syndicated daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, for which she holds a record for being on the show the greatest number of times. She currently has a recurring role on 30 Rock as Angie Jordan, as well appears as a special guest host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
On February 28, Shepherd was announced as part of the Dancing With The Stars Season 14 cast. She was paired with Val Chmerkovskiy. They were eliminated on April 10, 2012 from the competition placing 10th.

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Sherri Shepherd on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Shocking Elimination

Dancing With the Stars” fan favorite Sherri Shepherd, who was sent home Tuesday night in the most-shocking elimination of the season, called the experience an “amazing adventure” and urged her fans to take risks and keep challenging themselves.
“If you don’t go towards the thing you fear, you won’t be able to say you lived. Even if you fail, I got voted off, I wanted the ride to continue, but I got to say, I did it,” Shepherd said today on “Good Morning America.” “The thing that you fear in your stomach … run towards it. I absolutely believe that.”
“The View” co-host, who had been a long-time fan of the ABC show and campaigned to be a contestant on season 14, said you can’t really understand “Dancing With the Stars” until you experience it yourself.
“It pushes you mentally and physically and it is a life-changing experience, I have to say,” Sheppard said. “So I have to say thank you. … I’m so grateful to God for the ride I got to take, the friendships I got to make, the people I get to keep in touch with.”
Shepherd had earned 21 points – the second-lowest score of the night – for her tango on Monday. Judges told her it wasn’t sharp enough and lacked her usual spark.
Roshon Fegan and Chelsie Hightower were the other couple in danger of elimination, despite earning the second-highest scores on Monday night’s show.
Elimination in the competition results from a combination of judges’ scores and audience votes.  The couple with lowest combined total goes home.
For Shepherd, who traveled back and forth from Los Angeles to New York to keep up with “The View” throughout the competition, all of the travel on top of the grueling rehearsal schedule was worth it.
“I’m a mother. Mothers multi-task. We’re used to doing more than one thing at once, so … I was in that mother mode,” she said about juggling it all during her four-week “Dancing” stint. “It wasn’t work to me. I loved ‘Dancing,’ that whole process, I love ‘The View,’ so when you’re living the dream, it’s not work.”

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