Sherri Shepherd ‘takes inspiration from Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres’

The 55-year-old star has been handed her own eponymous daytime talk-show – which will air later this year – and Sherri is planning to take her cue from some of the most successful women in the TV industry.

A source said: “She’s bringing comedy back to TV … What she plans to do for the show is take Ellen and Oprah and combine it. It will be a funny, inspirational show.”

Sherri and her team have been meeting with some of the most influential publicists in the entertainment industry ahead of the show’s launch.

The TV star recently attended an event at Ink 48 in New York and she’s determined to make her talk-show a big success.

The insider told the New York Post newspaper’s Page Six column: “Sherri made sure she spoke to every single publicist that attended. She did the same in LA, literally every single one – all the networks and record labels.”

Meanwhile, Ellen ended her hit talk-show in May, after 19 years on the air.

The 64-year-old star closed the landmark episode with a monologue celebrating the changes in LGBTQ representation in showbiz.

Ellen – who is married to actress Portia de Rossi – said: “I was not allowed to say ‘gay’. I said it at home a lot. Like, you know, ‘What are we having for our gay breakfast’ or ‘Pass the gay salt? Has anyone seen the gay remote?’ Things like that, but we couldn’t say ‘gay’. I couldn’t say ‘we’ because that implied that I was with someone, sure; couldn’t say ‘wife’ and that’s because it wasn’t legal for gay people to get married – and now I say ‘wife’ all the time.

“Twenty-five years ago, they cancelled my sitcom because they didn’t want a lesbian to be in primetime once a week, and I said, ‘OK, then I’ll be on daytime every day. How about that?'”