Tracee Ellis Ross The Comedy Queen

ON THE CUSP OF THE 2020S, THE TURN-OF-THE century sitcom Girlfriends can claim classic TV status.

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Like an African-American Sex and the City, the show gave a humorous voice to Black women living and loving in sunny California from 2000 to 2008. But Girlfriends’ greatest legacy involves introducing the world to the comedy stylings of Tracee Ellis Ross. With comic timing worthy of Lucille Ball, Tracee became even more familiar to TV audiences years later as the Clair Huxtable-like matriarch Rainbow Johnson on ABC’s black-ish. Born and raised in Los Angeles as the daughter of Diana Ross and her first husband, music exec Bob Ellis Silberstein,