'90s Fitness Star Susan Powter Says she Hated Filming her Daytime Talk Show

[JamesG]

Susan Powter Struggled to Film "Horrifying" '90s Talk Show: "Wasn't a Segment on That Show I Didn't Hate" (Exclusive)
by Joey Nolfi
January 18, 2026


'90s infomercial icon Susan Powter tells Entertainment Weekly she only ever wanted to use her platform to spread vital knowledge on food and wellness — and, in hindsight, her short-lived, nationally televised talk show wasn't a healthy place for her to do it.

In an exclusive interview inside one of her favorite restaurants in Las Vegas — where she's lived for decades after losing her fortune due to bad business deals and what she calls a shady management team around her — Powter reflects on how she went from being a pop culture fixture of a bygone era to an Uber Eats driver who currently makes ends meet delivering meals throughout the Nevada city.





After hitting it big with her 1992 infomercial Stop the Insanity! (which was even parodied at the time by Kirstie Alley on SNL), Powter went from being a Texas mother with a passion for wellness to a nationally renowned fitness expert.

She describes her overnight success by saying Stop the Insanity! "blew the s--- up," leading to book deals, exercise videos, weight loss guides, VHS shopping guides, an interview on "The Tonight Show", and even a guest role on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" opposite Will Smith.





But, after Powter reached perhaps the pinnacle of success with her syndicated daytime talk series, "The Susan Powter Show", she admits the project made her realize that life in the spotlight wasn't what she was after in the first place.

“I did that horrifying show for the length of my contract," Powter remembers. “I said, 'I hate it, I hate the show. It has nothing to do with me, I’ve done it,'" before telling those around her that she wanted out of the show altogether before it ended its single-season run in 1995.





Powter goes on to call the men behind the scenes "prehistoric" — specifically, a trio of unnamed producers (according to IMDb, the show had four producers, and only one was a man).

Still, Powter calls the team "white men" who "had no idea about women’s anything," despite the show featuring segments aimed at women's interests. She even alleges that one unnamed staffer "grabbed everyone's a-- that walked by," calling the environment a "gross" one to work in.

https://ew.com/susan-powter-struggle...-show-11852884

[Hawkee]

I remember when Susan Powter was very famous after her famous Stop The Insanity commercials and I never knew she had a talk show until my mom and I saw The Susan Powter Show and it looked unappealing but what I think she was hoping to do was gain more fame because Susan Powter already scored fans with Stop The Insanity and she hoped that with her talk show she would gain more fans but it wasn't meant to be. I did hear that she wrote an autobiography after the show was cancelled