Sherri Shepherd once snuck a hidden camera into her son's room to spy on him and his girlfriend
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Forget helicopter parenting — Sherri Shepherd is all about spy parenting.
The talk-show host revealed that she once used hidden cameras to make sure that her 18-year-old son, Jeffrey Charles Tarpley Jr., and his girlfriend were keeping everything PG while hanging out together at their house, even going as far as putting one in his bedroom.
"I'll tell you one thing 'cause they broke up, but, like, literally, the girl came — I gotta tell, it's like I'm bursting," Shepherd said during a recent visit to SiriusXM's Andy Cohen Live. "The girl came over to the house and I remember calling Garcelle Beauvais and I was like, 'Oh my God, the girl's coming over to the house and they wanna kiss.' And she goes, 'Girl, I know because, you know, I'm going through it with my son.'"
Taking matters into her own hands, the comedian used DoorDash to purchase cameras from Staples and installed one in her family room to keep an eye on the young couple. Then, naturally, she sat downstairs in her basement and watched the video feed.
"I tried to put [the camera] behind the sign that said 'Love'… but it's a blinking light and I'm going, 'Oh my God,'" Shepherd told host Andy Cohen, adding that her son had no clue that a camera was capturing his private moments. "I showed Garcelle pictures and I go, 'They're not, um, doing anything.' And then I was like, 'Oh God, they're kissing. I can't.' And I couldn't watch it."
Her plan took a turn when Jeffrey invited his girlfriend up to his bedroom, causing Shepherd to think fast. "I ran up before them and I said, 'Jeffrey, I gotta get the laundry,'" she recalled. "And I ran up 'cause I had a camera, and it literally was like Mission Impossible."
"Hold on," Cohen interjected. "You ran up with the intention with this camera of putting it in his room?"
"In his room," Shepherd confirmed.
Monica Schipper/Getty Images Sherri Shepherd
"I tore up the box and I'm trying to read how you put the camera on Wi-Fi, and I can hear them talking and they're coming upstairs, and I'm like, 'Oh my God, oh my gosh, I can't,'" she recalled. "I'm trying to put the camera on the shelf and I finally… as they walked in the room, it started blinking and it was on my phone. And I was like, 'Oh my gosh.' And I pushed it with my butt so they couldn't see it."
When Cohen questioned why Shepherd was "torturing" herself by installing a camera and making herself privy to "whatever's gonna happen in there," Shepherd offered a simple explanation: "'Cause you know what, Andy? 'Cause I got a boy."
But he's well-mannered — Shepherd didn't catch the pair doing anything besides playing video games and kissing.
"You know what I realized? My son is such a gentleman," she said. "Like, they play video games and he would kiss her on the cheek and then sometimes they would turn, like, as soon as she turned her head, I was like, 'Oh, I can't watch it. I can't watch it.' But they never, like… they sit on the edge of the bed and play video games. And I was like, 'Oh my gosh.'"
Shepherd added that she has turned off the cameras since the hangout. "Once she left," she said, "I turned it away and took the cord out."
Listen to Shepherd recall her spy moment in the clip above.
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