Marla Gibbs, 94, on her life of 'breaking barriers,' still feeling like she's 30

You’ve watched her grace sitcom sets for decades, and at 94, Marla Gibbs is ready to tell her whole story.

In “It’s Never Too Late” (out now from Amistad), "The Jeffersons" star gets candid about the rocky journey to Hollywood stardom, including an unstable childhood and abusive marriage to her high school sweetheart. She also brings readers alongside her advocacy for Black representation in the arts, from public ventures like Vision Theatre in Los Angeles to her work on set to fight for equal pay and a seat at the table.

If there’s a thesis to “It’s Never Too Late,” it’s that Gibbs, even in her 90s, isn’t ready to slow down. In fact, she writes she’s still spiritually 30 years old. 

“I’ve learned not to worry about age and simply think about what I want to do with my life and know that I can still do it,” Gibbs writes. “No matter what age I am, if I want to accomplish something, I’m going to give it a try – and since I’m thirty, I’m expecting to do it.”

Acting ‘saved’ Marla Gibbs from ‘broken,’ abusive marriage

Gibbs was born in 1931 to parents in a “loveless” marriage and writes that she and her sisters were later molested by her mother’s boyfriends. Gibbs writes that she vowed “not to repeat generational patterns” but that “the choices I would make in my husband and friends would reflect my desperate need to be loved.”

Gibbs reunited with a boyfriend from her teen years after she had her first daughter, Angela. She and Jordan "Buddy" Gibbs had two more children together. Gibbs writes that her husband was abusive, forcing himself on her several times and giving her black eyes while she was pregnant. During a pregnancy, after an argument where she writes she “felt threatened,” she ran from her house and tripped, falling and eventually miscarrying. She writes that although she was hallucinating and clotting, Buddy told her to be quiet. When she tried to leave him the first time, a judge told her “You ought to know how to not push his buttons,” Gibbs writes. 

She eventually escaped their Detroit home and fled with her children to Los Angeles, where she hid from her husband. There, she found out her daughter Angela had been molested by Buddy.

He eventually found out where she was living and gave the relationship one more try. Gibbs writes that she regrets making her daughter “live again under the same roof as her abuser,” a decision she now calls “unacceptable.” Gibbs and her children eventually left him after he continued to physically and sexually abuse Gibbs until they got the police involved. 

Amid this turmoil, Gibbs says acting “saved” her and her daughter, who took classes together as a bonding activity. 

“If a character had strength, I seemed to gain strength. I grew by connecting with the emotions of a character,” Gibbs writes. “I was driven to pursue acting out of a passion to get out of myself and my current reality.”

She insists that she was the one to follow her daughter into the industry, not the other way around. When she landed her breakthrough role on “The Jeffersons,” Gibbs was a single mother working in the reservations department of United Airlines, a role she kept well into her time on the sitcom.

Buddy has since died, and Gibbs writes that he "was more than the bad behavior he exhibited toward me and the children, and I bore no bitterness in his last days nor after he was gone."

Gibbs fought for equal pay, creative control in her sitcoms

Gibbs’ “Jeffersons” role was originally limited to a guest star, but Florence’s comedic timing was a hit with audiences, and she soon moved up the ranks in the show’s top billing. She was being paid less than half of what the leads were making. 

Gibbs rallied the rest of the supporting cast and wrote a letter on their behalf, meeting with the executives and securing raises and more airtime. She was able to leave her day job at United. 

This is just one example of Gibbs’ outspoken advocacy on her TV projects. She also recalls clashing with “The Jeffersons” writers, “breaking protocol” to critique the writing. 

“I interjected. ‘Excuse me, Black people don’t talk like that.’ The writers were mostly men and Jewish and that made a difference in how they hear and speak language,” Gibbs writes. She pleaded her case – audiences would think it was an issue with the actors’ performances, not the writing. “Before long, our producers let all of the actors sit at the table. A new tradition started with our show. It only made sense that writers know what an actor’s thoughts are about the words they’re obliged to read.”

Similarly, she became an executive producer behind closed doors on her post-“Jeffersons” sitcom “227” after advocating against stereotypical portrayals of women and Black men in the show. Norman Lear’s company decided she would have “all rights, courtesies, and privileges of an executive producer … without the on-screen credit.” This caused friction with some of the cast, who weren’t told of her producer role and sometimes went over her head “because they had no idea that I was in the background, fighting for them.”

“Unbeknownst to me, though, I was walking an uncharted path. I was breaking barriers and making history in the industry for women and for people of color,” Gibbs writes. “I was determined to present the kind of family and community most Black folks grew up with.”

Regina King, Gibbs' "bonus daughter" who played her on-screen daughter in "227," praises Gibbs' unseen work in the foreword. King writes that she "didn't fully grasp the depth of (Gibbs') advocacy" as she had the responsibilities of an executive producer without the credit.

Gibbs would continue to trailblaze and carve space for Black artists in her LA business ventures, including Vision Theatre, her theater company Crossroads and jazz club Marla’s Memory Lane. 

Marla Gibbs reveals she had a near-fatal aneurysm

Gibbs also opens up about health struggles in “It’s Never Too Late,” disclosing a brain aneurysm she had in 2006.

Getting ready for interviews at a play showing when she “felt something go ‘bloop’ in my head” and passed out. She underwent two surgeries and had a stroke after the first. 

“The doctors told my family that I had two days maximum to have brain surgery, and if not, I would die from the damage. They further explained how dangerous the surgery was and that if I was lucky enough to survive, there was a high probability that I would never act or possibly even walk again,” Gibbs writes. “Their exact words were ‘Your mother’s life as you know it is over.’”

But Gibbs was persistent in her recovery, even if it took her time to accept depending on others and slowing down in her recovery “was essential to me healing.” She didn’t tell anyone she had an aneurysm because “we thought it would hurt my chances to work again,” she writes. And work again she did – Gibbs went on to release a jazz album, develop a social media presence with her grandson, guest star on Chicago Med with her daughter and become an Essence covergirl in 2025 for an edition honoring Black women in Hollywood.

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at [email protected].