Shari Lewis' Daughter Gives 'Honest' Look at Mom's Life as Iconic Lamb Chop Puppeteer (Exclusive)
- - - Shari Lewis' Daughter Gives 'Honest' Look at Mom's Life as Iconic Lamb Chop Puppeteer (Exclusive)
Angela AndaloroJuly 11, 2025 at 4:33 AM
John Nacion/Getty; Barry King/WireImage
Lisa D'Apolito and Mallory Lewis pose with Lamb Chop (left), Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop in 1993
Shari Lewis' legacy lives on through daughter Mallory Lewis, who continues to perform with her mom's beloved puppet, Lamb Chop
Mallory tells PEOPLE what it was like working with director Lisa D'Apolito to share the star's fascinating life story in Shari & Lamb Chop
Shari & Lamb Chop debuts in select theaters on July 18
Shari Lewis is best known for her ventriloquism work with the beloved puppet Lamb Chop, but a new documentary aims to shine a light on who the multi-talented star really was.
Shari & Lamb Chop, directed by Lisa D'Apolito, has the blessing of Shari's daughter, Mallory Lewis. Mallory tells PEOPLE she was eager to see her mom's story made for the big screen after seeing 2018's Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary RBG. Soon after, she met a producer who helped her put the idea in motion.
Finding the right director was important to making the project the best it could be. Mallory met with Lisa D'Apolito in New York City — and knew she was the one.
"Someone had recommended her and they said, 'Well, maybe next time you're in New York, you can meet Lisa.' And I'm like, 'Well, I'm going to be in Chicago in 48 hours. Why don't I just keep going?' So I went and I met Lisa and I said to her, 'Tell me something about yourself that I can't find out on Google.' "
D'Apolito's response was "a very personal thing that had also happened to me," Mallory shares. "And we both burst into tears and I knew I could trust her with my mom's story."
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Kino Lorber
Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop
Likewise, meeting Mallory and Lamb Chop sealed the deal for D'Apolito, who also directed 2018's Love, Gilda, about the late Gilda Radner. She was drawn to telling Shari's story as someone who was "in between the two generations of Shari's shows."
"I wasn't in the Shari Lewis Show [generation] and I wasn't in the Lamb Chop's Play-Along [generation]. So I always knew Shari as being on Hollywood Squares and I didn't really think much about her until someone told me that they had met Mallory."
D'Apolito admits, "Something about Lamb Chop excited me. And I started researching Shari to see, is there a story in there? And the first thing I saw was that her father was the official magician of New York City, and I had no idea there was such a thing."
"I started learning about the magical way she grew up. Then I started watching her performances and to see how amazingly talented she was, I thought 'She's so much more than what people think she is.' "
Putting together the documentary would not be easy. For one, they had to gain access to Shari's archives.
Al Fenn/Getty
Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop
"All of Shari's archives were in David Copperfield's museum or warehouse. We had a truck come and get all of her archives and we brought it to Mallory's house. I would go there from time to time and just go through everything," D'Apolito shares.
While going through the archives, Mallory jokes, "Lisa's a documentarian, so she loves old stuff. I am very much my mother's daughter — I look toward the future. I had no desire, but it was a treasure trove for Lisa, and I think she did a wonderful job."
"I think it was pretty amazing because there were things that I didn't know about Shari. I didn't know she was on Playboy After Dark. I didn't know that she had a nightclub act. There was a lot that — [people] think that the time between the '60s and the '90s, when she was on the shows, she didn't really do much, but she did."
John Nacion/Getty
Lisa D'Apolito and Mallory Lewis pose with Lamb Chop as they celebrate "Shari & Lamb Chop" in 2023
What the two aligned on was that "Lisa loves strong women like I love strong women. And she really told mom's story non-sentimentally, not in a sappy way, but in a very direct way," Mallory says.
However, there are parts of Shari's storied life that didn't make the cut that the pair wish had.
"I thought Lisa did a fabulous job, and she and I are both mad about one thing. If you're the estate, you can only be involved to a certain degree, otherwise it's not a documentary. And I trusted Lisa with mom's story, so I kept my hands out of it. But we both forgot to include the fact that mom wrote one of the original Star Treks," Mallory says.
"She did an amazing amount of different things and reinvented herself and Lamb Chop over and over and over again to keep relevant and keep herself in shape as an artist," D'Apolito notes. "She also wrote 50 books. She was always busy. So it was a lot to go through, because she had pretty much a 50-year career."
Once the documentary was made and sold, the two faced one more hurdle: the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It took a number of years to put all the pieces together," Mallory points out. "But I feel that Lisa really told mom's story beautifully and painted a picture of a woman coming of age and coming into her own power during a difficult era."
Kino Lorber
'Shari & Lamb Chop' poster
D'Apollito credits Mallory for making that telling possible. "Mallory has been an amazing partner, and she was also the producer on her mother's show," she shares. "She really knew everything and I could always call up Mallory and ask her, 'What was your mother doing here?' or 'What was this like?' or 'Who was this person?' "
The director continues, "I think also it's important to me that the family, both Mallory and Shari's sister and Shari's cousins, feel that I portrayed Shari in an honest way. Not in a flattering way, but in an honest way. That was really important to me."
Shari & Lamb Chop debuts in select theaters on July 18.
on People
Source: AOL Entertainment
