It’s Never Too Late: A Memoir

Gibbs, best known for playing Florence Johnston on The Jeffersons, highlights her personal struggles and professional triumphs in this empowering autobiography. The action begins at the 2025 American Black Film Festival Honors, where Gibbs, at 93, told the room, “If you have some projects for me, my agents are standing right over there,” in the middle of her acceptance speech for a legacy award. That indefatigable spirit suffuses the proceedings: early sections about Gibbs’s turbulent Chicago childhood in the 1930s and ’40s are sandwiched between a glowing foreword from Regina King, who played Gibbs’s daughter on the TV sitcom 277, and a triumphant recollection of her move to Los Angeles in the ’60s. There, while working as a United Airlines flight attendant, Gibbs booked a slate of blaxploitation films that led to her defining role as the Jefferson family’s spunky maid. Gibbs deepens her behind-the-scenes anecdotes, which also include stints on Scandal and Tyler Perry projects, by interweaving them with an unflinching account of her abusive marriage to her high school boyfriend and details of her turn toward faith after she suffered a brain aneurism and a stroke. The result is funny, moving, and more than a little inspiring. (Feb.)