Night Court's Marsha Warfield on living out and proud later in life

There’s a particular power in rising and failing and making the arduous journey back up. You learn so many lessons along the way, mostly about yourself. For comedian and actress Marsha Warfield, her rise back-up comes full circle as she steps, once more, into the shoes of Roz Russell, the tough-as-nails bailiff on Night Court, in the season 3 finale of the rebooted series.

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She also made an appearance last season and even held Roz’s same-sex wedding in the courtroom.

Best known for playing Roz in the original Night Court (1986–1992), Warfield has had a career spanning comedy clubs, television sets, and cultural milestones. She’s shared stages with legends like George Carlin and Teddy Pendergrass, had her own talk show (The Marsha Warfield Show), and starred in TV series including Empty Nest and The Richard Pryor Show. But for nearly two decades, she disappeared from the public eye.

Now she’s back with what is a quiet resilience. Yes, Warfield earned her chops as a take-no-prisoners comedian, but her earnest fortitude and calm and accepting demeanor of life’s challenges radiantly shone through.

During an intimate chat with The Advocate, Warfield opened up about her life, her early stardom, the years out of the spotlight, and then the long road back.

“When I grew up, nobody talked about being gay,” she said. “I saw the world from the middle. I didn’t feel that ‘girly’ pull. I wanted to run around, play with the boys. So when they told me I had to start wearing shirts outside, because I was 5 or 6, I was furious. I didn’t understand why the rules were different for me.”

Warfield describes her gender and sexuality as existing in a kind of liminal space, with an early understanding that she didn’t quite fit into prescribed boxes. But in the 1970s, the language around her sexual orientation and a community that could have helped her make sense of those feelings weren’t readily available.

Her self-realization of her orientation started innocently enough. “I met a woman who made me nervous in a way I didn’t understand,” she said. “I told my boyfriend at the time about her. He said, ‘Girl, you’re in love.’ And a bell went off. That made sense.”

Warfield’s coming-out journey was deeply personal, and, at first, private. “I wasn’t Ellen. I wasn’t Rosie. I wasn’t Wanda,” she said, referring to groundbreaking lesbian comics. “I was in the professional closet with the glass door. You’d show up on the red carpet with your ‘assistant.’ When asked who you were dating, you’d say, ‘Let’s not talk about my personal life.’ That’s how it was done.”

However, her mother had always known, which brought her both comfort and pain.

“When I came out to her in the early ‘80s, she said, ‘I know.’ And I was pissed,” Warfield recalled. “‘If you knew, why didn’t you say something?' and she said, ‘I love you, but do me a favor and don’t come out while I’m alive.’ And honestly, given the time, that didn’t seem unreasonable.”

It was the height of the AIDS crisis. Fear, violence, and stigma stalked queer people in both public and private life. Warfield chose a kind of compromise: She came out to friends and family but remained publicly closeted in Hollywood.

“I wasn’t one of the brave ones,” she humbly repeated. “But today, I’m on a mission to honor those who never got to be their full selves. So many women my age never got to explore who they were. They came out later in life, 50s, 60s, 70s. And some never did. For them, the question was ‘Can I be me?’ And for so long, the answer was no.”

The silence, however, wasn’t just about identity. Warfield also stepped away from the spotlight to heal. “I took time off to survive,” she said. “I didn’t call it trauma at the time, but that’s what it was.”

In the early ‘90s, she lost her mother and aunt within two months of each other, shortly after, her home was destroyed in an earthquake. Add to that the weight of addiction, something she says she didn’t recognize as such until later, and a career in flux, Warfield made the decision to move to Las Vegas and help her sister raise her young nephew.

“I ended up staying until he graduated high school,” she explained. “In the meantime, I slowly began to put myself back together.”

In 2015, she got her own place again. She started working out and began writing jokes. But reentering the comedy world wasn’t as simple as dusting off old material. “I had 20 years of stage rust,” she remarked. “I wasn’t the same comedian. I wasn’t the same person. I had to reintroduce myself to myself.”

It took nearly a decade to rebuild her act and find her voice again. “A lot of people think they can just take 20 years off and go back to it. It doesn’t work like that.”

But now she is back. Not as a nostalgia act but as a fully realized version of herself and one that stands in full command of her identity, her story, and her art. And as icing on the cake, Warfield also met her current wife, Angie, while she was performing at a comedy club in Vegas.

“She heckled me, and I’ll stop there because she hates when I tell that story,” Warfield laughed. “We had our first date four months later, and then she married me five years later.”

There is a certain courage to being a stand-up comedian, courage to walk away from stardom, and then an abundance of courage to claw her way back; however, Warfield is reluctant to wear it as a badge. “There’s courage in just being in show business,” she said. “You stand up there and say, ‘This is me,’ and wait to be judged. And you do it again. And again.”

And now, as Night Court fans welcome Roz back into their living rooms, they're not just seeing a beloved character return. They’re witnessing the triumph of a woman who refused to be defined by silence, who lived through eras that tried to erase her, and who, after all this time, still knows how to bring down the house.

And in this new chapter of her life, Marsha Warfield isn’t asking for permission. She’s standing firmly in the spotlight, answering that old question ‘Can I be me?' with a resounding, joyful yes!

“I’m a stand-up comic,” Warfield said. “I do stand-up. Acting? That just came with it. But telling the truth, making people laugh, being real? That’s what I live for.”