Join our Waitlist for Expert Advice!

Suzanne Somers Multi-Million Dollar ThighMaster Business Was Born After Being Booted From 'Three's Company' for Demanding Equal Pay Somers made $300 million on the ThighMaster.

By Sam Silverman

Key Takeaways

  • Actor and fitness icon Suzanne Somers passed away Sunday at age 76 after a long battle with breast cancer.
  • Somers was fired from "Three's Company" for demanding equal pay.
  • She went on to develop her own brand with more than a thousand products.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Before the world knew Suzanne Somers as the ThighMaster entrepreneur, she played Chrissy Snow on "Three's Company," for five seasons of the hit show, which aired from 1977 to 1984. But in 1981, she was fired for demanding the same pay as her male colleague and series star, John Ritter, which would have bumped her pay from $30,000 an episode to $150,000, plus a percentage of the show's profits, per Fox News.

"At that time, the men were making 10 to 15 times more than I was," Somers told Fox in an interview last year. "And I was on the No. 1 show. It just seemed wrong because I was clearly being underpaid."

Somers, who passed away at age 76 on Sunday, was an equal pay pioneer — and took a lot of backlash for it.

RELATED: Suzanne Somers Explains How ThighMaster Squeezed Its Way Into Infomercial History

ABC refused to meet her demands and slowly phased her out of the show. Her last episode was at the end of the show's fifth season.

"Now, I was out of work and labeled 'trouble' only because I wanted to be paid fairly for doing my job," she said.

After getting over "the shock and the hurt and the anger," Somers remembered that there was great power to her name that now had "enormous visibility."

"I was portrayed as greedy and 'Who does she think she is?' and was persona non grata in television," Somers recalled.

She went on to cement a Las Vegas residency at the MGM Grand shortly after her exit from the show. "We did incredible business and my stage career was started," she said in 2016 to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Her residency was cut short due to a fire at the MGM Grand, but she went on to star in Las Vegas Hilton's "Moulin Rouge" show for two years.

Photo by ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images | "Video Mania" Behind-the-Scenes Coverage - Airdate: October 29, 1993.

But following her stint on stage, Somers turned her attention to entrepreneurship and became a brand ambassador for an at-home exercise device called the ThighMaster. She became known for her infomercials, with one particularly memorable for featuring her in high heels and workout wear.

She sold 10 million ThighMasters in the first two years, according to Fox. While she stopped counting how many she sold, she said she made $300 million from the deal.

During a March 2022 interview with "The Hollywood Raw Podcast," she said she bought out the company, which was developed by tobacco heir Joshua Reynolds, and owns 100% of the ThighMaster business.

"We had partners — 50/50 — and they got drunk on money when it all started selling," she said during the interview. "They overspent to the point where they could no longer afford to be in their side of the business, so we bought them out."

She went on to develop her own products under her name ranging from clothing, jewelry, and health and wellness products. She was one of the top-selling brands on the Home Shopping Network in 1992, and since then, her business has remained in operation and she still sells products on her website today.

"I have over a thousand products," she told Fox News Digital in May 2022, adding that she also published 27 books, 14 of which were best sellers.

"Would I have wanted to do it this way? No, but I allowed it to take me and us where it wanted to go," she told Fox. My biggest complaint today is that I work too much. I'm always keeping busy."

At her time of death, Somers had a reported net worth of $100 million.

Sam Silverman

Content Strategy Editor

Sam Silverman is a content strategy editor at Entrepreneur Media. She specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), and her work can be found in The US Sun, Nicki Swift, In Touch Weekly, Life & Style and Health. She writes for our news team with a focus on investigating scandals. Her coverage and expertise span from business news, entrepreneurship, technology, and true crime, to the latest in entertainment and TV news. Sam is a graduate of Lehigh University and currently resides in NYC. 

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Starting a Business

She Started a Business With $300 After Getting Laid Off. It Made $300,000 in Year 1 and Became a Multimillion-Dollar Company.

Bobbie Racette wanted to revamp the virtual assistance space — and provide job opportunities for underrepresented communities at the same time.

Business News

Can Anyone Beat Microsoft at AI? The CEO of Salesforce Thinks His Company Can.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff calls Copilot "the new Microsoft Clippy."

Starting a Business

How to Find the Right Programmers: A Brief Guideline for Startup Founders

For startup founders under a plethora of challenges like timing, investors and changing market demand, it is extremely hard to hire programmers who can deliver.

Franchise

McDonald's Launched a Happy Meal for the 30th Anniversary of a Classic '90s Sitcom — But There's a Catch

The promotion is only available in one country, so fans elsewhere are turning to resale platforms like eBay to buy the collectible toys.

Business Ideas

63 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2024

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2024.

Business News

'Not Yet Fully Autonomous': Tesla's Optimus Robots Stole the Show — But Were They Actually Controlled By Humans?

Musk said the $20,000 to $30,000 robot could perform household tasks like mowing lawns and putting away groceries.