Judge Judith Sheindlin, or “Judge Judy” as she is known among television viewers, opened up Wednesday about her decision to retire and formally pass the torch to her son Adam Levy, telling the hosts of ABC’s “Good Morning America” this week, “It’s time for me.”
Sheindlin’s retirement was quietly announced Sunday, five years after “Judge Judy,” the reality court show that made her a household name, ended its decades-spanning run in 2021. The announcement of her retirement was accompanied by the news that “Judy Justice,” Sheindlin’s “Judge Judy” spinoff that premiered on Amazon’s Prime Video in 2021, would be coming to an end. Its last episode is set to air on Oct. 22.
“I’m retiring from in-front-of-the-camera TV bench [for a] couple of good reasons,” Sheindlin said Wednesday on “Good Morning America,” noting, “I’ve aged pretty well over the years, reasonably. I look better than my grandmother did at my age, which didn’t take a lot. But it’s time for me, too, and I’m still gonna be creative, still out there. I’m just gonna take the message and put it in a little bit of a different form. I’m gonna become the Benjamin Button of court.”
Sheindlin added that she felt comfortable retiring because her son, a lawyer and former district attorney in Putnam County, N.Y. is “ready” to fill her shoes. With that in mind, she is onboard to executive produce her son’s “Judge Judy” follow-up, “Adam’s Law,” which premieres Monday on CBS Media Ventures.
“She said, ‘Be yourself and don’t screw this up.’ On brand and direct,” Levy said on “GMA” of his mother’s advice, adding of their behind-the-scenes bond, “It’s terrific. She was there from the beginning giving me advice on how to do the show, and then every case that we have, she always has some input, so yeah. I mean, it’s just incredible to be able to work with her.”
You can watch the mother-son duo’s “Good Morning America” interview below.
In addition to “Adam’s Law,” Sheindlin’s representative Gary Rosen said Sunday that the longtime television personality is in the midst of developing “Judyverse,” a new adult animated series featuring a baby as Judge Judy.
Over the course of its 25 years on the air, “Judge Judy” won three Emmy Awards and frequently drew nearly 10 million viewers every day for many years. Its success led to Sheindlin becoming, at one point, television’s highest-paid television host. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was presented with a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
While Sheindlin began her career practicing corporate law for a cosmetics company, she found her true calling when she joined the New York Family Court system. Reflecting on her retirement, Sheindlin said she felt it was important to only step away once she thought someone could properly fill her absence.
“You need a voice of reason [to] keep us stable in these very odd times,” she explained. “I don’t feel as if I’m deserting that because I’m transferring it over to someone with whom I share — well, he shares with me — some basic values that we seem to have lost.”
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