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Mallory Lewis loves following in her mother’s footsteps — even in ways fans would never expect.
Speaking with PEOPLE about Shari & Lamb Chop — a documentary portrait of her mom, trailblazing children’s entertainer Shari Lewis and her beloved sock puppet Lamb Chop — both Mallory and director Lisa D’Apolito say that there are plenty of surprises in store for fans who only know the star from her TV shows.
“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,” D’Apolito shares.
“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.”
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Courtesy of Kino Lorber
Shari’s raunchier moments with Lamb Chop are particularly precious to Mallory, who got to bear witness growing up and later coming to work with her mom on Lamb Chop’s Play-Along and The Charlie Horse Music Pizza.
“It’s funny because there’s a routine she does, a drunk routine, that I perform as well. I performed it at the Magic Castle, which is a 21 and over club, so there was no chance of children in the audience. And this woman comes up to me afterwards and she goes, ‘Your mother would’ve been horrified by that routine,’ ” Mallory recalls.
“I looked at her, I’m like, ‘Madam, my mother wrote that routine,’ ” she laughs. Mallory says she sees much of the same in her performances with Lamb Chop today, especially when the duo talks politics on TikTok.
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“I’m like, ‘My mother would be horrified by it?’ I’m like, ‘Really? The woman who testified in front of Congress on behalf of children because she thought that the government was doing such a crappy job of taking care of them? She would be horrified? I don’t think so.”
Mallory believes the shock is rooted in the fact that “Everybody has an image of mom.”
“But I’m not performing for children on TikTok. I am speaking to mom’s kids, the ones who grew up watching mom, who are not kids,” she notes.
“So I find it funny when people are shocked, but it’s like people think that mom lived in overalls in a small box in their living room. She didn’t. She had a full life with love and happiness and sadness and dinners with friends and trips, and she existed outside of overalls in a box in the living room.
Shari & Lamb Chop debuts in select theaters on July 18.
