Stop the Madness star Susan Power opens up about the ‘humiliating’ experience of TV fame

Fitness queen Susan Powerwhose Stop the madness! promotional video swept the country with her alternative approach to diet culture in the early 1990s, recounted her “humiliating” experience of TV fame – and the feeling she lost control of her short-lived talk show, The Susan Power Show.

Pawter previously said that at 66, she now supports herself by delivering food for Uber Eats and receiving $1,500 monthly Social Security checks. PEOPLE that her ’90s stardom quickly disintegrated due to bad business deals and alleged lawsuits from those she surrounded herself with.

After gaining fame for her weight loss story after gaining 260 pounds after giving birth to her two sons, Powter said she signed on with a manager and investor partner to help launch a company “for an exercise studio and maybe a clothing line.” But that soon turned into a $2 million advance for the book and one season of the series. The Susan Power Showa nationally syndicated talk series that ran from 1994 to 1995.

“I didn’t run my company; it was a 50/50 deal,” however, Power said. “They started making me out of me,” she continued. “And this happened when the money got here (raising his hand high). Then it was like, “Oh, Susie, don’t say that. No no. It’s too much. Oh, you’re shocking.” . Shocking. But it’s the same shock that brought me there.”

Power admitted that she “worked really hard on this show” and filmed three episodes a day. “But it was humiliating,” she continued. “They put me in pearls. Look at me – do I look like a pearl type? And I didn’t have the right to vote. All these fragments, I can’t even watch them now.”

She also recalled that her business earned about $300 million, but this did not correspond to the amount that was “in the bank account” that she owned.

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“I never made the money that I made,” she said.

“I didn’t just decide to leave. My heart broke in half,” Powter, who now lives in Las Vegas, added of the betrayal she felt amid soured relationships with various business partners. “It was shocking. I was furious. And I thought: I just don’t exist.”

In addition to talk shows, Powter impersonated Saturday Night Liveguest starred in one episode along with Will Smith in a 1994 episode of the series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Airand even a planned role in a 1995 sitcom. Women at homewhich never aired. She also appeared in the episode RuPaul’s Drag Race as a guest judge for the third season in 2011, before filming her videos Shopping with Susan The videotape has gone viral on TikTok in recent months.

Powter’s prospects are brighter today as she is currently working with director Zeberiah Newman and Oscar-winning actress. Jamie Lee Curtis about a documentary about her life that will be released in 2025. She also recently released a self-published memoir: And then Em died… Stop the madness! Memoirs.