Sherri Shepherd spends her weekdays with an opinionista to her left, an opinionista to her right and an audience in the studio and watching on TV at home.

But when it came time for "The View" co-host to record her dialogue for "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," she found herself in isolation. "You're sitting in a booth in a chair with a glass of water and a microphone, so you do have to get inside this character."

In her case, she speaks for the mother of Alex, the Central Park lion who ended up marooned on Madagascar with a zebra, a hippo and a giraffe in the 2005 original. Alex, we learn in the new movie, was born in Africa but lured outside the safety of an animal reserve and separated from his mother and father, Zuba (voice of Bernie Mac).

Shepherd has never been to Africa, but she has a 3-year-old son, Jeffrey, and she's as fiercely protective as a mother lioness.

"It's about a woman who's lost her son and who is getting him back and who is very protective of her son and doesn't want to lose him. And she loves her husband, and she's willing to give up everything to be with her son.

"Well, I got a 3-year-old and I would do that in a heartbeat. So really, sitting in that booth by myself with a microphone, I just went, 'What would happen if I had to give up my son, Jeffrey? How would I feel?' It was very emotional, very raw emotion, just where my imagination took me."

Shepherd recorded some of her dialogue in New York and some in Los Angeles over a period of six months. When her son saw the movie, he was stumped about the animated animal with the familiar voice.

"He kind of craned his head, and he recognized my voice and said, 'Mommy?' ... He couldn't reconcile the fact there was a lion with my voice."

Her character, by the way, doesn't have a name. "Yeah, she's just mama lion. I was just so grateful to be included in the project," she could have been called anything.

In recent years, Shepherd has juggled many names and roles: Angie Jordan, wife of Tracy Morgan's character on "30 Rock"; co-host of the 2008 Daytime Emmys; one of the oddball friends on the former ABC comedy "Less Than Perfect"; Brad Garrett's police partner on "Everybody Loves Raymond"; the voice of twin toucans on the Disney Channel comedy series "Brandy & Mr. Whiskers"; God on "Joan of Arcadia"; and real-life secretary by day and stand-up comedian at night.

This was the first time she had to breathe life into a lion.

"She's not a penguin, she's not a lemur, she's not a hippo," Shepherd said in a recent phone interview, reeling off some of the other animals who populate the screen. "She is the wife of a king, and she's lost her son who will be the king." Without a king, the pride could die.

Shepherd would love to visit Africa some day. "As soon as I can get this binky out of my son's mouth, 'cause I'm afraid he'd lose it in the jungle and if he lost that binky in the jungle, we all in trouble on that safari."

For friends and admirers of Mac, this is a bittersweet day, with both "Madagascar" and "Soul Men" opening three months after the comedian died.

"Bernie, he was so phenomenal and he was so funny. I'm very honored that I got to play his wife in this movie. They would pipe in his lines into my ear," and Shepherd would joke to the directors, "I can't believe you all let Bernie Mac say that."

That is a voice she would have loved to have heard in "Madagascar 3" or "Madagascar 4," if there are such sequels. But the actor who spoke for the king of the jungle was the king of improv and when Shepherd saw the finished movie, she thought, "Aaw, Bernie, you got taken too early."

No one would argue with that.