Suzanne Somers became the fitness queen only after she was fired from “Three’s Company” following an equitable pay dispute in the ’80s.
Somers starred as beloved blonde secretary Chrissy Snow on the sitcom, and worked alongside Joyce DeWitt and John Ritter on the Emmy-winning series. Heading into the fifth season and amid meteoric success, the actress demanded a salary increase from $30,000 per episode to $150,000, which matched Ritter’s compensation, in addition to a percentage of profits.
ABC refused to give in to her demands, and the network slowly began nudging Somers out of the show until she was finally fired when her contract ended after the fifth season.
She didn’t let television executives set her back for too long, however, and went on to a profitable Las Vegas residency before putting her entire focus toward building a fitness brand centered around one of the world’s most coveted pieces of exercise equipment: the ThighMaster. Somers admitted she made almost $300 million from the device alone.
Somers, who lived in Palm Springs with her husband of 46 years, Alan Hamel, gave one of her final, in-depth interviews in 2022 as part of the upcoming Fox Nation series, “The Infomercials That Sold Us.”
“I will forever, ever be grateful to ‘Three’s Company,'” she said. “Wow, what an opportunity to create a character so beloved. And I would morph into her, and I miss doing her. That was the biggest thing when I got over the shock and the hurt and the anger.”
The actress recalled some of the difficulties surrounding her exit from the popular show during an interview with Fox News Digital last year. “At that time, the men were doing 10 to 15 times more than I was,” Somers said. “And I was on the No. 1 show. It just seemed wrong because I was clearly being underpaid. And it’s not like I stopped the show. My contract was up. We had a meeting with the lawyers [at ABC] … But, by then, they had already decided.” “I was waiting at home — and remember, this was a time before cellphones, so it felt like an eternity,” Somers recalled. “It was a gray day. And the front door opened in a way that you knew bad news was coming. It was really slow. And I heard my husband going up the stairs really slowly. I met him at the landing.
“He looked at me, shook his head, and said, ‘You’re out. You were gone within the first five minutes when I walked into the meeting.’ … Now, I was out of work and labeled ‘trouble’ only because I wanted to be paid fairly for doing my job.”Somers had become known as a powerful female voice on television screens, and was regularly featured on magazine covers in addition to a fan-favorite on the late-night talk show circuit, but the media turned against her for taking a stand for herself.
“I just remember sitting in my living room — same gray, cold day, months later — just thinking, ‘Why?’” she recalled. “And I heard a voice. I think we all hear voices. We just don’t often tune in. But that voice said, ‘Why are you focused on what you don’t have? Why don’t you focus on what you do have? You have enormous visibility. Most of the people on the planet know your name at this point.'”
After wrapping her lucrative 15-year Las Vegas residency, Somers struck gold again by becoming a brand ambassador for a simple-to-use exercise device touted to turn legs into shapely thighs in a matter of minutes.
“I bought a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes that made my legs look so good,” she said. “It was mainly a vanity thing. But when I bought the shoes, I was in my dressing room and thought, ‘Oh, my God, what is Al [Hamel] going to think? I’m so stupid for spending so much money on a pair of shoes.’ Well, it just happened that I was in my bra and underpants. So I walked out and asked, ‘Like my shoes?’ And he said, in his great, deep radio voice, ‘Great legs.’ That was the commercial. And I was able to write off the shoes because I wore them in the commercial.”
Somers sold 10 million ThighMasters in the first two years and stopped counting thereafter. In 1992, she became one of the Home Shopping Network’s top-selling brands. She has since authored 27 books, including 14 bestsellers, and has clothing, jewelry, health, wellness and supplement brands in her name.
