Airing on NBC for a whopping nine seasons beginning in 1984, Night Court was a hit sitcom with a beloved ensemble cast. At the center of the show was young judge Harry T. Stone (Harry Anderson), who had a talent for magic and a job presiding over the undesirable night shift of a municipal courtroom in New York City. The rest of the regulars were made up of the were lawyers who appeared before him (including Markie Post and John Larroquette) and the courtroom staff. While Richard Moll played memorable bailiff Bull throughout the whole series, the role of his counterpart was played by a few different actors. The longest-serving was Marsha Warfield, who joined the cast of Night Court in Season 4 to play bailiff Rosalind "Roz" Russell" and stayed with the show until the end.
Today, Warfield is 67 years old and still performing as an actor and a comedian. Read on to find out what else she's been up to since Night Court went off the air.
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Warfield recently returned to acting after a long hiatus.
Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesAfter Night Court, Warfield went on to star on Empty Nest, as Dr. Maxine Douglas, and make appearances in lots of other shows, including Living Single, Cybill, and Mad About You. She also appeared in several movies, including Mask and Caddyshack II. But after a cameo in the Kirstie Alley comedy Veronica’s Closet in 1999, it would be more than 20 years until audiences would see Warfield onscreen again.
“I had a family commitment thing I had to attend to that needed my time and presence,” she explained of her break in an interview with 50 Bold. “The matter needed my attention and then I could resume pursuing my passion, so I went for it!”
On her official website, Warfield calls her time away from the camera “an overlong period of retirement" and describes her comeback as “revenge.”
“You take the hiatus that I did, and suddenly, there’s a whole new landscape out here,” she told 50 Bold. “I am a whole new person. I have to reintroduce myself to this country and to the world”
In 2021, Warfield made her return in a big way—on one of the most popular shows on TV. She plays Toni Wilson, Hen's mother, on the Fox medical drama 9-1-1.
She's also performing live comedy again.
Bobby Bank/WireImageWarfield is not only acting again, but she’s getting back into live comedy, too. In 2021, she began performing an act called "The Book of Marsha."
“I call my show 'The Book of Marsha' because, at this age, it’s my story, looking back over my life and the world as I know it over these past 60-plus years,” she told Pride Source. “It all comes out in my standup.”
Warfield also shares pieces of her comedy act and talks about her real life on her YouTube channel. It’s no surprise that she feels so comfortable speaking to an audience, since she was briefly the host of her own talk show, The Marsha Warfield Show, in 1990.
Warfield came out publicly in 2017
When Warfield left retirement, she also decided to come out to the public as a lesbian. Today, she’s in a relationship with a woman named Angie, who she told Pride Source she hopes to marry.
“I was tired of being in [the closet],” she said in the same interview. “People don’t understand how much the world has changed for LGBTQ+ people and they don’t realize that LGBTQ+ is a fairly new acronym. Everybody was in the closet until pretty much the AIDS crisis and the bungling of that brought issues to the forefront that had long been purposely buried. Deliberately buried.”
It was also difficult for Warfield because, as she revealed in a since-deleted Facebook post, her mother asked her not to come out of the closet until after she died.
“I agreed, even though the request and her admission were hurtful in ways I couldn’t put my finger on then, and probably haven’t completely worked through now,” Warfield admitted in the post, via The Root. “But, everybody who knew me, knew I was gay. The people I didn’t tell knew anyway, and tacitly agreed to pretend that the unacknowledged had been acknowledged and accepted. Like I’m sure is true for millions of other glass door closeted people.”
She continued, “Nobody should have to hide their sexuality. No parent should ask their child to. There should be no shame in being gay.”
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She is outspoken in the fight for equal rights.
John Lamparski/Getty ImagesWarfield uses her platform—including her TikTok account, her Instagram, and other channels—to speak out about what she believes in, frequently touching on gay rights, racial equality, and feminism.
“Just because you personally are not a racist that doesn't mean racism is not a deeply ingrained systemic problem,” she wrote in a 2019 tweet. “Same with sexism and the patriarchy. Stop deflecting and mansplaining.”
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