By Tunisha Brown

After decades on television, S. Epatha Merkerson says the greatest role she’s ever played is learning how to listen to herself.

For more than three decades, audiences have trusted S. Epatha Merkerson to embody authority.

First as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren on Law & Order, the longest-running Black character in American television drama – and now as Sharon Goodwin on Chicago Med, Merkerson has spent a lifetime portraying women whose strength steadied everyone around them.

When the cameras stop rolling, authority looks very different; it looks like sleep, boundaries, learning that your body has a voice, and finally deciding to listen. At 73 years old, Merkerson isn’t interested in pretending she has everything figured out. “I’m a work in progress,” she tells me with a smile.

It’s a sentence she repeats in different ways throughout our conversation. Not because she doubts herself, but because she refuses to stop growing.

Longevity Isn’t Luck. It’s Preparation.

Hollywood celebrates reinvention. Merkerson celebrates consistency. While many actors spend careers chasing the next opportunity, she has quietly built one of television’s most remarkable résumés by doing something much less glamorous, she stayed ready. “I tried to stay current,” she says; but not with trends, with her craft.

During her years on Law & Order, she continued returning to theater, the place she still considers home. Unlike television, where scenes are filmed out of sequence, theater allows a character to unfold uninterrupted. “You work through the process without having to go backwards,” she explains. It reminded her why she became an actor in the first place. Television built the career, but theater protected the artist.

Looking back, she doesn’t describe longevity as talent. She describes it as preparation meeting opportunity. She remembers Broadway producer Joe Stern watching her perform The Piano Lesson before inviting her to appear during the first season of Law & Order.

She remembers another renowned casting director seeing her work and opening another door. “There are people that come into your life that change your life,” she says. “They become your little angels,” then she pauses, “but you’ve still got to do the work.”

When the Body Finally Speaks

There is a moment every woman eventually reaches. The moment when determination is no longer enough. The body begins asking different questions. For Merkerson, that moment arrived during menopause; sleep, food, and her energy mattered.

She had recently quit smoking after years of believing she’d never be able to. Then came another diagnosis, diabetes. “I found myself afraid,” she admits. She had watched diabetes move through her family for generations. Her grandmother lost her eyesight. An uncle lost his limbs. Her father died at just 57 years old.

Her brother lives with diabetes today. And yet no one talked about it. “We talked about Grandma losing her eyesight,” she says. “We didn’t talk about diabetes.” That silence became impossible to ignore. Working with an endocrinologist, changing the way she ate, and eventually incorporating Ozempic into her treatment helped transform her health.

Today, she proudly shares that her A1C numbers are excellent, but the greatest transformation wasn’t medical, it was mental. “I tried very hard not to be upset with myself,” she says. “I had to understand that it’s a process.” That lesson echoes far beyond diabetes. Healing rarely happens all at once. It happens one decision at a time.

Purpose Beyond Performance

For Merkerson, diabetes awareness isn’t an extension of her celebrity, it is an extension of her responsibility. Statistics show Black Americans are disproportionately affected by diabetes.

Yet conversations about prevention remain rare.

“If people can see someone they watch on television going through the same thing they’re going through,” she says, “maybe they’ll listen.”

She doesn’t speak because she believes she has all the answers. She speaks because she knows what silence costs. “This has not been easy for me,” she says, “but people need to know they aren’t alone.”

Health advocacy, for Merkerson, isn’t about platforms, I t’s about proximity. If her visibility can help someone schedule a doctor’s appointment, ask better questions, or change the way they eat, then every interview becomes an opportunity to save a life.

The Woman She Wishes She Could Meet Again

When I ask what she would tell her younger self, she doesn’t hesitate, “Don’t start smoking.” She laughs before saying it, then grows quiet.

Of every mistake she believes she made, that’s the one she’d erase; but perhaps the greatest surprise comes when she tells me she’s only recently learned to enjoy cooking.

During the pandemic, she began baking bread. The first loaf failed spectacularly, “It was a brick,” she laughs. She called a friend for help, bought a bread maker, and kept trying. Today, the woman who once avoided the kitchen now enjoys preparing meals herself. Growth didn’t stop because success arrived. Success simply gave her permission to keep becoming.

Building From Truth

We often imagine wisdom as certainty, S. Epatha Merkerson offers something much more valuable, curiosity. At 73, she still learns, go through changes, asks questions, and listens. Perhaps that’s the real secret behind her extraordinary longevity. Not that she mastered life, but that she never stopped becoming a student of it.

For women navigating career transitions, health challenges, identity shifts, or simply the next chapter of life, Merkerson’s story offers a quiet reminder:

Strength isn’t carrying everything forever, it is knowing when your body is asking you to carry something differently, and having the courage to listen.