Susan Powter gets fully transparent about her struggles on welfare in her new documentary, Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter.
The film, which hit select theaters on Wednesday, November 19, shines a light on “fitness queen” Powter’s public disappearance after she lost her wellness empire and declared bankruptcy in the mid-’90s. The documentary, produced by Jamie Lee Curtis, follows the now 67-year-old as she details her job as an Uber Eats driver and recalls her days living in a weekly welfare hotel while struggling to make ends meet.
Powter rose to fame in the early ‘90s for her Stop the Insanity! infomercials, inspired by her personal story of being a housewife and mother who gained weight after a contentious divorce. Fans would call in to pay $79.80 for her program of workout tips and and natural food recipes, garnering a level of success that spawned three best-selling books, a TV show and more.
According to Powter, she amassed nearly $200 million in profit before a series of bad business deals and lawsuits left her in financial ruin. By 2018, she was on welfare and living in a weekly welfare hotel in Las Vegas before securing a job working for Uber.
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“People don’t know. I don’t see one penny, where’s it going?” Powter recalls in the documentary. “I never said, ‘Show me the damn bank balance.’ I should’ve.”
While speaking to People earlier this month, Powter said that she’s not looking for a “big fancy-schmany life,” but simply one where she’s able to afford the basic necessities..
“I want insurance, I want a credit card, I want to pay my bills,” she shared with the outlet. “I want a dentist. But if it does happen, it’s going to be well-managed. It’s going to go to my kids and to me. I want to give my children back what should have been theirs.”
Keep scrolling for the biggest revelations from Powter’s Stop the Insanity documentary:
Getting Her Start
Powter explains in the doc that after her divorce from ex-husband Nic Villarreal, she “ate and ate and ate,” “nursed” her two eldest sons, Kiel and Damien, and “plotted his death.” After gaining more than 100 pounds, she transformed her life, becoming a “fitness queen” in the process. (Powter tied the knot with Villarreal in 1982, but they divorced in 1988 following his affair with another woman. She later was married to Lincoln Apeland in 1989 to 1995, and they welcomed one son together, Gabriel. She came out publicly as a lesbian in 2004.)
Her infomercial, Stop the Insanity, skyrocketed to No. 1 in 1993, which led to her talk show, The Susan Powter Show, and a best-selling book, Stop the Insanity! She reportedly raked in close to $200 million in profits before things took a turn for the worse.
“I was incredibly hopeful, excited, had no idea the hardest years of my life were ahead of me,” she says in the doc.
Filing for Bankruptcy
After Powter teamed up with Dallas publicity representative Rusty Robertson in 1990, the women created the idea for Powter’s “Stop the Insanity!” infomercials. Powter claims in the doc that she happily agreed to split her earnings with her business partners 50/50. “It was equality, I was rallying for the team,” she explains.
She alleges that out of her 50 percent, 25 percent was used to pay other people working for her. The remaining 25 percent was then used to pay for “everything” else, from meals to hotels, something Powter claims she “didn’t know for the whole of the success.”
Powter then found herself in a massive lawsuit with business partner and president of the Susan Powter Corporation, Jerry Frankel, after she tried to change the percentages of income. The corporation sued Poweter for breach of contract, and she filed a counter lawsuit against the Frankels and the corporation, a feat that ultimately cost her $6.5 million and led to her declaring bankruptcy in 1995.
Ultimately, Powter claims that she didn’t “ever” see the millions she reportedly made, and that her salary at the “max height” of her fame was around $200,000.
The end of the documentary reveals that Roberston declined to participate in the doc, while Frankel died in 2018.
Delivering for Uber Eats
Power moved to Las Vegas in 2016, taking any job she could to get by before she was hired by Uber Eats. “There isn’t a job I haven’t done in the past 10 years,” she tells the cameras while out on a delivery. “I was thrilled to get a job with Uber Eats.”
Living in a Welfare Hotel
Power reveals that she was forced to move into a weekly welfare hotel called Harbor Island, just a few blocks from the Las Vegas strip, when she was at her financial bottom. She shares that she would walk up to “20 miles a day” to get from place to place, to the point where her flip flops would melt from the heat of the pavement.
Calling the hotel “horrifyingly sad,” she notes in the doc that she would watch people “lose their minds, people pooing outside your door, banging at 3 in the morning.” She recalls going to throw her garbage in the dumpster one night just to see “two men popping up from the garbage” to scare her.
Bugs were also an issue. “There was no food, no dishes in the cabinet, and I would put a spoon down on a plate and turn around and there would be eight roaches,” she remembers.
When she was forced to walk miles to a welfare office to deal with dental work one day, Powter tells the cameras that “something changed” within her with “every step back of that walk back.” It was at that moment that she became determined to turn things around for herself.
While she has secured better living conditions, she talks about missing “real food” most of all, recalling previously having to go to CVS to buy cans of beans. “In the past few years, getting to eat and smell my own food, it’s pure luxury,” she says in the doc before blending up a series of vegetables and herbs to sip on for lunch.
Her Life Savings
According to Powter, her life savings currently totals $6,100, which she keeps in an envelope and adds to every day she can, “step by step, book by book.” She notes that the “only thing” that could wipe out her savings is dental work or a car issue, which she experiences in the documentary.
The repairs cost $500 dollars, but Powter refuses to call her sons — who she insists would pay the bill — because she doesn’t want to bother them.
“I just want to survive, get beyond it, get what’s mine, back,” she says while holding back tears. She gets her car back after a couple of days, but claims, “There’s no way out of this. I’ve done every shift. I’ve lived in every place. There’s no way out of this.”
Misses Feeling Like a ‘Mother’
Powter insists throughout the documentary that she still has a positive and solid relationship with her children, but explains that she misses feeling like “Susan Powter, the mother.”
She recalls one instance a few years prior in which after being given a mattress, she had to follow her 25-year-old son around in the store so he could buy her bed sheets for her, causing her to break down.
“I had to pretend I wasn’t dying inside,” she says of the experience. “And I made some ridiculous excuse [to leave].”
“I miss buying my son sheets and being the one in the store helping him set up his apartment,” she continues, through tears. ”And they stop asking you out of respect because they don’t want to make you feel bad, but I still do. I miss that. That’s what I mean by normal. My normal. Those years are gone. Everybody has adjusted, but I haven’t. That feeling is cellular. It doesn’t go anywhere. It makes you feel like a piece of s***.”
Just Wants the Basic Needs
“I want enough money so that I can afford the basic things and if I need,” Powter shares in the doc of her hopes and dreams. “And I am going to get an RV. And I’m not going to travel with it, I’m going to live in trailer parks. And I’m going to jack up the internet and go online. That’s my dream.”
While not entirely where she wants to be yet, Powter revels in driving to Los Angeles for a business trip in a car “that feels safe” during the doc, and being able to eat at a restaurant and not feel out of place.
“It’s going to be OK. I survived,” she says.
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All About the Blonde
In addition to being known for her fitness, Powter’s bleached blonde crew cut was one of her major identifiers in the ‘90s. The documentary reveals she used to bleach and cut her hair short because she “hated it,” and was looking to kill the hair in order to make it stand straight up.
Powter is given a haircut in the doc and goes from a light brown to a white-blonde ‘do. She immediately has a bad reaction to the new look, noting that she wants to shave her head and get a tattoo on her scalp that reads, “F*** you.” (She ultimately keeps the hairstyle for a professional photo shoot.)
