Why ’90s Fitness Icon Susan Powter Walked Away from Her ‘Stop the Insanity!’ Fame: 'They Produced the "Me" Out of Me' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Susan Powter in 1993 (left) and in July 2024 for a PEOPLE photo shoot.Photo:Courtesy Susan Powter;Chloe Aftel

Courtesy Susan Powter;Chloe Aftel

Susan Powternever expected to become a fitness guru when she first started teaching exercise and nutrition to fellow homemakers in Texas.

“I just got up and spoke to women,” she tells PEOPLE. “That’s what I did in the infomercial. It was unrehearsed, unscripted. And those women responded.”

Powter in her ‘Stop the Insanity!’ informercial circa 1993.

When Powter signed her first contract with her manager and an investing partner establishing her company, “it was for an exercise studio and maybe a clothing line. That’s it,” she says. But within a year, she was appearing the nationally syndicated daytime talk showThe Home Showand was given a $2 million advance for her first book. “Nobody expected that,” she says.

Susan Powter in PEOPLE’s Most Intriguing People issue, 1993.

But she soon realized she had handed over too much control — and money — to her business partners. “I wasn’t running my company; it was a 50/50 deal,” she says. And the business began to push her to be someone she wasn’t.

“They started to produce the ‘me’ out of me,” she says. “And that happened when the money got to here [raising her hand up high]. Then it was like, ‘Oh, Suze, don’t say that. No, no. It’s a little too much. Oh, you’re shocking. Shocking.’ But that’s the same shock that got me there.”

She felt the effects of that control most forcefully after she began filming her syndicated television show,The Susan Powter Show, in 1994. “I worked very hard on that show. Shooting three shows a day. I did it with everything I had,” she says. “But it was mortifying. They put me in pearls. Look at me — do I look like the pearl type? And I didn’t have any say. All those segments, I can’t even watch them now.”

In Seattle, she rented a cabin, taught cooking and fitness classes and took up photography, living a “hippie” life that suited her, she says. “I was away from every big corporation…and I was very happy.”

Susan Powter photographed for PEOPLE, July 2024.Chloe Aftel

Chloe Aftel

Powter, who’s just released hermemoir, is planning an RV tour around the country and wants to reconnect with fans again. And this time, she says, “nobody is telling me what to do.”

source: people.com