A new documentary will shine a light on famed ‘90s fitness instructor Susan Powter’s public disappearance.
In a trailer for Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter, shared by Entertainment Weekly on Tuesday, October 21, Powter, 67, is seen working as an Uber Eats driver in Las Vegas and admits to spending a “whole day in a welfare office.”
Australian-born Powter, who rose to fame through a series of ‘90s infomercials where her catchphrase, “Stop the insanity!” slammed the rise of fad diets, is also seen detailing the cause of her declining financials in the documentary, which was executive produced by Jamie Lee Curtis. (The fitness instructor allegedly amassed and lost nearly $200 million in business deals at the height of her fame, per EW.)
“People don’t know. I don’t see one penny, where’s it going?” Powter says. “I never said, ‘Show me the damn bank balance.’ I should’ve. Things had happened that nobody expected… the hand-me-downs of food.”
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Curtis, 66, is also seen posing the question, “How much of the downfall is someone’s responsibility and how much is it bad actors?”
According to the outlet, the documentary will discuss how “shady management and legal associates drained her finances.”
Powter, who built a fitness empire after divorcing a former husband and losing more than 130 pounds, per USA Today, is also seen shopping for groceries in the trailer. Turning a packet of food over in her hand, she says, “Why bother reading the ingredients?”
The trailer also touches on Powter’s decision to write her 2024 memoir, And Then Em Died…: Stop the Insanity! A Memoir. “I just started writing in case anything happened to me,” she tells the camera.
“I think something’s shifting. The fear, the poverty, the hopelessness. It’s this tsunami of what was, what happened, the truth,” she adds. “I’m going to blow the roof off.”
In an interview with People in October 2024, Powter spoke candidly about the past two decades of her life. At the time, the outlet noted that she lived “in a low-income senior community where two times each week a local charity hands out free meals.”
Powter, who declared bankruptcy in 1995, said, “I’ve known desperation. Desperation is walking back from the welfare office. It’s the shock of, ‘From there, now I’m here? How in God’s name?’”
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She continued, “There was nothing but lawsuits in the ‘90s. They put me in pearls. They produced me out of me. Those segments — I can’t even watch them now.”
Powter also made several management claims regarding her finances during the interview. “Someone else was handling it. I never checked balances,” she alleged. “I should have questioned. I fully acknowledge that. I made a mistake. I knew how much control I gave up. I didn’t know what got paid where, but I had no property. There was no fund left for my children.” (Powter is mother to three sons including a third whom she adopted as an infant after publicly coming out as a lesbian in 2004.)
She also discussed her job as a food delivery driver. “I’ve got 4,800 total trips,” she told the outlet. “I’m a hard worker and I take care of that food and I’m proud of the work I put in … I’m not looking for a big fancy-schmancy life.”
