Marla Gibbs opened up to ET about her time working on ‘The Jeffersons’ and with the late Norman Lear.
Marla Gibbs is feeling nostalgic.
The 93-year-old actress sat down with ET to reflect on her long and successful career that has spanned 39 movies and 72 television shows, including her time on the decade-long beloved sitcom The Jeffersons. She also got candid about working with the late Norman Lear, the legendary Emmy-winning writer, producer and TV creator of The Jeffersons.
The Jeffersons aired on CBS from 1975-1985. Gibbs, who portrayed sassy maid Florence Johnston, said she was only supposed to do one show of the comedy but was soon invited back and offered a contract.
“I was doing a play when I got The Jeffersons so I always thought I would be doing that. The Jeffersons was a one shot deal. I was only supposed to do one show,” she said. “I was happy I had one shot. I got a chance to do it. So I was very happy and then they invited me back to do a show on the fifth episode and then invited me back for the eighth episode and then they invited me for a contract. So I was surprised.”
Gibbs can still remember the day she met Lear, who died at 101 on Dec. 5 at his home in Los Angeles of natural causes. The two first met in 1975 when Gibbs auditioned for him with the “How come we overcame and nobody told me?” line.
“Turned out that was one of Norman’s favorite lines so he always said I was his favorite,” Gibbs shared.
Even though the two didn’t have an immediate connection, Gibbs looks back on Lear profoundly.
“Norman, such a profound person. I’m telling you. You don’t forget Norman,” Gibbs said.
She recalled telling Lear one day that she wanted him to come and visit The Jeffersons.
“In the meantime, in The Jeffersons, they said ‘Norman is coming. Norman is coming? Who invited him?’ ‘Marla.'”
Even though people may have been upset that Gibbs brought the boss to work, he was needed to fix an issue with the way the Willis’ were performing.
“They were having a problem and I knew he could solve it because I’d seen him the way he handled things and he came in and he solved the problem,” Gibbs said.
When Gibbs first read the script of The Jeffersons, which follows a Black family moving into a luxury apartment building in the Upper East Side of New York City, she “had no idea” what a cultural impact the show and her character would have.
“Well, The Jeffersons, they reflected all of society,” she explained. “Isabel was the people who volunteered to do things. They had the health center. Roxie was in an interracial relationship. George represented the people who were successful without benefit of formal education. Florence represented all the people who worked.”
She continued, “I had no idea Florence would be accepted the way she would. It was just wonderful and people would always remember my whole name. They’d say ‘Marla Gibbs.’ It was always amazing to me.”
Gibbs was originally worried that children wouldn’t be able to connect with her character.
“When I first got Florence, I worried what other children would think, would not connect with a maid, but they would always come up and say, ‘My aunt was a maid.’ They’d always try to find somebody in the family who was a maid,” she said. “So that was really nice.”
Even now, The Jeffersons is still loved by so many. Gibbs recounted a sweet fan encounter.
“I was doing an autograph show in Tennessee and this older white guy came by to get a picture and he was almost crying,” she said. “Then he came back later without his friends and he said, ‘I used to watch the show with my grandmother,’ and then he started to break down crying… I mean he was really crying and I said, wow, it means so much that they watched it with people in their family who are no longer with them. And they still have those feelings.”
She added, “The Jeffersons was the show that everybody could watch with their children, with their grand folks. Everybody could watch it.”
While Gibbs thinks fondly of her past, she’s also excited for the future. Gibbs is releasing her memoir, “It’s Never Too Late,” in the fall. In the memoir, she traces her rise from Chicago’s South Side to long-term success in Hollywood. She also has an online boutique called Marla’s Boutique, which she said is ran by her grandson.
