Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Interview with Suzanne Somers

I recently interviewed Suzanne Somers on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview (note that the transcript is not 100% accurate, as it was captured through an automated transcription service and lightly edited; for the interview in its most accurate form, please listen directly at www.thirtyminutementors.com):

Adam: I'm excited to introduce a guest who needs no introduction, though she is known to some as Chrissy Snow, roommate of Jack and Janet and tenant of Mr. Roper and Mr. Furley on Three's Company, one of the greatest sitcoms of all time in my opinion, to others. She's known as Carol Foster Lambert, the matriarch of the foster and Lambert families that came together on step-by-step to everyone. She has known as Suzanne Somers, author of 27 books, including three number one New York times bestsellers. Her most recent book, a new way to age, explores a variety of cutting edge techniques at the forefront of anti-aging. Suzanne, thank you for joining us.

Suzanne: One. Correction, it's not three number one, best sellers, 14 out of 27, but I think this book is going to be number one. I've been very lucky or maybe I've tapped into the collective consciousness with so many of these books.

Adam: Wow. 12. That's unbelievable. My God. We're going to dive into that a little bit later on in the interview. Well, some of the books you've written have been specifically on anti-aging. This book is on anti-aging. You've interviewed leading doctors who specialize in anti-aging. What are some of the most important things that listeners of all ages should understand about how to fight the aging process?

Suzanne: I got cancer 20 years ago and I remember at the time thinking, wow, well what have I done to play host to this disease? And I kept thinking about it and I realized, I thought I ate right. What I did, and I was doing television theories and you know, on television sets they have the craft table with all the, the, it should be called the crap table, cause all just processed foods, food that has orange powder and other than to work, there's no orange powder in nature. And we weren't eating tumor. So the cancer thing was very, I caught a veiled gift. I even on the first page of this book, I said, you never know where the veiled gift is going to come from. I turned down chemotherapy, I had to listen to Andrew Weil and Larry King, who I adore talk about me on Larry show that Andrew had declared that I was most likely not gonna live with the choices I've made and I thought I have to me less chance of living if I do it your ways and if I do it my way.

So as I do, I changed the way I ate. I ate only real foods, organic foods, but you can take it, smoke it or shade it. I ate it. I a high fat, high protein, high fat stole diet and that made the butter cream sour cream, olive oil, full-fat cream cheese. But it's all organic, no chemicals, organic protein. I value sleep now and I didn't use to, I used to write my books in the middle of the nights and no one would bother me. That's a game changer. And I changed my thinking. You know, you can let your thoughts you up if somebody ticks you off and you can like let it kind of overtake you. And I tell you, when I was fired from Three’s Company, I had some bad thoughts going on in my head and I had to do the work to undo that and realize that this was probably another veil diff.

And you know what? He'd fired as crappy as it was and as wrong as it was because I delivered, I just felt that, you know, forget male or female. I, I was selling the most tickets. So I felt that I deserve to be paid commensurate with other people who are being paid 10 and 15 times more than we that weren't selling any tickets. So where did I learn out of that? What I learned out of that is the power of reinvention. It didn't happen immediately, but one day I'm sitting there thinking, what did I do this for? Here I was on top of the world. That's 55 or more magazine covers every year, featured on 60 minutes, 2020 there wasn't a show I wasn't on. There wasn't a special, I wasn't on. I thought there's power in being that famous. And a little voice in my head said, you know, you're, you're holding onto what you don't have.

Why don't you focus on what you do have? And I thought, I have enormous visibility. Everybody in this country and most parts of the world know my name. I said to Alan, my husband, who were in business together and truly, truly in business together, we dig and zag together. We get one another, we know one another's strengths and that's really important. I said, I'm about to do a Vegas act, let's take my name and let's, let's so he went to Vegas, he went to all the hotels and they all offered him two weeks cause that's all they were offering. And he turned them down. He went to Bernie Rothkopf at the MGM brand who he describes as looking at somebody who's mafia uncle. And he said, I want a two year deal for Suzanne summers and I don't care what the money is. And Bernie Roth cos looked up at him and said, why do you want that?

Nobody gets to two year deals. Cause I know Suzanne, she, she, she just needs the time to really work it out. But she's going to sell tickets cause she's a curiosity right now. And he ended up making a deal at the MGM grand for two years at more money than I was asking for onto Three’s Company. And in 1987 I was named a Las Vegas female entertainer of the year. I'm Frankston officer was named a Las Vegas male entertainer of the year on in this process when, and I'll let you ask some questions. So sorry to do this monologue. But when I think about it, I've always reinvented and I now know the rhythm of careers. When you reach a point where you're about as high as you can get, that's about the time that you turn right or left. Otherwise you're going to go down. And I've had many incarnations, they've all been successful, but the cancer led to writing all the books and the books have changed my life and hopefully the lives of over 25 million people who have been exposed to my books around the globe.

Adam: That's incredible. And you've actually preempted a lot of the questions that I was going to ask. No, no, no, not at all. I think it's great. I think it's better coming from your mouth and coming from mine. But I guess taking a couple of steps back, how did you become Chrissy? How did Three's Company come together?

Suzanne: Sometimes magic happens. In 1973 three amazing things happened. I got my first book of poetry to publish. Don't even know how I was an absolute unknown, I would say model, but I would put model with a small M. I mainly did extra work and movies and because I had a baby and no husband and you do what you have to do. And I fell in love with Alan Hamel who lived in Los Angeles and I would do anything to be with him. And I read in the trades that the Dom DeLuise's show was looking for a guest star described as small town Burl doesn't know who she is and doesn't know what she looks like. And I was smart enough to know that's me. And so I didn't know.

I didn't know you need an agent. All that. And it was Burbank, NBC studios, two o'clock. So I said to Alan, I'm having an interview Tuesday at two o'clock at Burbank. He said, good, I'll pick you up at the airport, which is all I wanted. And we go over to Burbank. And when you know, when you don't know anything, you don't know anything, why are you here? I'm here for the dog, Delaware's show, go over there and park over there. So I, I go in and there are a bunch of girls sitting there and much better looking than me and I kind of watch what they're doing. They sign in with the receptionist and then she gives them a script. So I signed in with the reception. She gave me a script. I was called in to read bye guys by the name of Sam den off and his partner Bill Persky, who I eventually ended up working four and with two of the greatest comedy writers in television, sitcom history. So I finished reading for Sam den off because very nice and I thought, I know exactly what you're looking for. I'm a small town girl. I don't know who I am.

He said, I'm going to give you a call back. I will. I will. Thank you. So I go down to the receptionist and I said, I have a call back. She's a little bit for you. I said, what is that? And she said, they're going to call you back. I said, when? She said, I don't know, I think like today. Yeah. And now I'm her problem. And she's annoyed. She goes, these are the words that changed my life. I don't know why you go wait in a commissary. So I don't read the commentary. And so I'm three o'clock in the afternoon, I'm sitting there by myself and I couldn't find anything so I didn't have any money. I'm just sitting there and in walks Johnny Carson and I thought to myself, Oh my God, there's Johnny Carson. Oh my God, there's Johnny cart. Oh my God. Johnny Carson's walking over to me.

He walks right up to me. He goes, Hey little lady, what are you doing here? And I said, I have a call back. Cause now I had some window light and I told him about Dom DeLuise. Ah, Dom's a good friend of mine, I hope you get it. And I didn't even have an eight by 10 all I had was my little book of poetry. I just shoved the book into his hands there. Thanks a lot. That was Wednesday and on Friday night of that week I made my national television debut on the tonight show and I had to write a bad check for a dress cause I didn't own a dress. The dress was $75 and certainly be, I'll figure out how to make that light. And I thought, Oh my God, he must love my poetry. But what I didn't even think about was I had one credit and on the back I had one credit that I put on my book that cover that said that she was the mysterious blonde in the Thurbird in American Graffiti.

And I'm now waiting behind that firm's famous curtain hoping I don't throw up. And I hear Johnny Carson say, well we've all been wondering who the mysterious blonde and Candice Bergen Americans receive is. Well, we found her because I didn't actually get a credit on the movie that was so insignificant. And I walked out in the audience, went woo. And I sat down next to Johnny and he loves me because I was so unpolished. He said, well, when did you get to town? And I said, today, everything was literal. So, because he liked me, started having me on every month and my little book of poetry became the number one bestselling book of poetry in America along with another poet, Roger McEwen. And on one or maybe many or all, I don't know of those appearances, but Silverman of ABC who was president ABC, they're looking for a girl for Three's Company. They had hired two and they didn't test well. And Fred, as he later told me, he said, I'm sitting in the meetings that I got the girl, I see her on the tonight show all the time. And that's how I ended up on Three's Company as Chrissy Snow.

Adam: At what point did you realize that the show is going to be such a success and what was it like working with John Ritter and Don Knotts and just being a part of something that has been such a special part of TV history?

Suzanne: Well, it was clear from day one, looking at John Ritter, you're working with a major, major talent, and because I had no training or to open with the task by saying I, I've not studied acting. I mean my acting experience was getting the lead in the high school musical called guys and dolls, and I was Adelaide, but I was really good at that Adelaide, and I don't know how this happened either. Serendipity again, a guy by the name of Walter windshield, I bet you've never heard of him, right? No. Walter Winchell in the forties was the first guy to have a major national radio show. And, L. We started out with a ticker tape kind of sound and this as far as for Winchell, and he had this specific sound and you wore a trench coat and pork pie hat, but he was one of the characters that Damon Runyon who wrote guys and dolls fashion, one of the characters after Walter Winchell.

And I don't know how Walter Winchell heard about this high school musical. So I'm closing night. He came, he's from New York and I'm in the West coast. He walks on the stage at the end of the show, walks right up to me and says, you're going someplace sister. So because of that, I got a scholarship to college, but I got pregnant the first time I ever had sex in the first month I was in college. So I didn't get to finish anything and I just was in into this scrambling thing of trying to make a living. When I walked onto the set of Three's Company, I told them that story, which I thought would endear me to them. That made them all mad at me because like, well wait, frozen, fair. This is not where you come to learn. But I decided to watch John leader.

I just couldn't take my eyes off of him. He was so great. Don didn't come onto the show for a couple more years. He came on after the ropers bought off and, and then there was another guy, the producers were Nichols Ross and West Mickey Ross took me under his wing the way Nadia Comaneci a coach when the Olympics took her, you know, Nadia would do a flip in a turn and she'd look to her coach and he drew a thumbs up or thumbs down. And that's how I worked with Mickey Ross. He worked with me on everything and he taught me the rhythm of comedy and it, it didn't take me long. The first year I was a little rough, but by year two, you see there's a whole transition and I was okay the first year, cause I looked right. I had that naive small town girl does the who she is, doesn't know what she looks like, kind of a look.

But what I realized was happening was a Mickey Ross was falling in love with me, never came onto me, but in the way of father desires his daughter, but knows it's wrong. So he became possessive, possessive of me. This turned out to be a, what brought me down when we hit year six and the show was number one and John Ritter, was the star over Chrissy snow the star or was it the combination of the two? They sure were popular. I couldn't take off any weekends. I was always shooting magazine covers and special. So when it was time to renegotiate, not only did ABC have an agenda, but Mickey Ross had an agenda. Cause I had told him, you know, a year before, I'm in love with Alan, how am I marrying Alan Hamel? And he got furious. Why are you doing that? He's so wrong for you. That's sort of ruin your career.

What makes your career work is that you're not married. This is awful. Any Oh jelly. Every time Alan would come around and be obnoxious. So when Alan walked into this meeting where they be, see already having decided they were going to fire me, guess who we had to negotiate with? Mickey Ross. Mickey Ross is sitting in the chair opposite him and Alan says, you know, Suzanne's been on over 150 magazine covers and she's had her own television specials and she's this and she's that in the highest demographics of any woman in television, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So she would like you to pay what they are paying the men. And in most cases it was 10 and 15 times more than I was being paid Mickey Ross, as Alan describes it, we're sitting there smoking a cigarette like a joint, you know, puffing away angrily. He takes the cigarette, throws it on the floor of the lawyer's office, stands up, leans over Alan Hamel, nose to nose and says, you want me to share my blood with her? And Alan said, yes. That's when everyone said she's out. Get out. So to us,

Adam: How did you bounce back from that experience? It must have been something that, you know, obviously all of us go through personal difficulties and professional difficulties and we fail each day, big and small. But this was obviously something that was devastating for you personally and professionally. Yet you were able to bounce back in a way that made you more successful than ever. How did you do it? And really, what's your roadmap for listeners on how to overcome failure and overcome big obstacles and take that next step and become even better because of the setbacks I've had before.

You got to take the time to grieve. Don't take too long. Get up. Don't stay on that pity pot too long. For me, it was the realization that everybody knew my name and that I, that was powerful. That was more powerful than being, you know, Joe Schmoe from nowhere. I was Suzanne Somers wherever I went, people, and he says, Suzanne Somers, all I ever heard was, Oh, I missed you on that show. You were so great on that show. And I was also fighting their publicity machine. They put the, they, they had a much bigger machine than me and they're putting out that she's greedy and she won and she's trying to ruin the show and she's too big for her riches and stuff. That's hard to get past with the public. So I had to reinvent, that's when I went to Vegas and I didn't know that I, I understood how to work an audience and I didn't know that.

I knew that. And I did that by being absolutely honest. And it's like I'm a small town, girls don't know who I am, don't know what I look like. I made fun of myself on stage. I morphed into Chrissy and, and would sing and dance like her. I gave them what they wanted. I talked to them, I'm not at them but to them. And I had major success in Vegas for a long time, all through the eighties and the only reason I left Vegas was that I got called back to TV when things had calmed down to do step by step. I, you know, in my new book, a new way to edge my first page says, you never know where the veiled gifts is going to come from. Cancer was a veiled gift. That's how I changed my life, changed my diet, changed took power of my body, not gonna let you fill me, fill me up with chemicals.

I'm not seeing that it's working so well. When I look around and see if a chemical poisoning was so effective, everybody about cancer would say, Oh, no big deal. I'll just take some chemicals and I'll be okay. We know that's not true. So, but I had to buckets. It's hard to bucket I think. I think having a partner who gets me, believes in me doesn't fight me on these things has been a huge advantage for me. And he, my husband was as famous as Johnny Carson at Canada. He had their late, my talk show, who is them. He would just did an interview for Canadian magazine. You know, they all loved Alan Hamel up there when I was fired. You know, if he did, he walked away from being the Johnny Carson of Canada. And I said, don't. You'll miss it. You'll miss. He goes, he says, no, no, I've been doing this so long.

I've talked everyone in to talk to him. He said, you have a real shot. He said, you, you can really be a force, but you're going to give it away because you're so nice. You're going to say yes to everybody. And so he took over my career and he knew my friends who knew my weaknesses, who is a visionary, saw years down the line like they're not. I opened in Vegas. I had what I'm making up numbers right now, but they're in the ballpark, let's say 10 dancers in the 30 sixties orchestra in eight or nine costume chambers and huge success because it was such an extravaganza. Krissy was sending in dancing and tap dancing and everybody's loved, and Chrissy [inaudible] cat fans. It was so fun. But when we're walking into our room that night, he said, I see a day when you're not going to have any of that because you're just going to talk.

And I went crazy. You know, two years ago I had a residency at the Westgate hotel in Las Vegas, which was the Las Vegas Hilton and I had my own room and scars loving it so much and I only had a seven piece band. I did change my clothes a few times cause I am a girl, but I mainly, I sang, I mainly talk, I buy in the piano and talk and we were sold out every night. People just loved it. That's reviews of my entire career. People respond to authenticity and honesty. You don't phony it up. It's mesmerizing and I, I believe that there are more big fish awaiting me. You all of us, it's, it's really not the problems in your life that define you. It's how you respond to the problems in your life that define who you are as a person. I refuse to be a victim.

I had a terrible childhood. I've written three books about it for which I'm glad I, I learned everything having to hide in that closet at night. I learned everything from the violence in my childhood home. You know what I got from my childhood home? I got a case of what I called the all show you, my father used to say, you know, you're stupid and you're hopeless and you're worthless and you're nothing in here. They go and I remember it in my little head. I think I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you. And I did. And I also forgave him. He had a terrible disease. I wrote the book that I wrote to him was I, it wasn't fun. It was frankly terrible. But what a gift you gave me, and I've used that throughout my life. There'll be a victim. Anybody listening, if you choose to be a victim in any situation, they who victimize you win. You've got to win by forgiving and forgive. Forget it. Forgiveness is a gift to give yourself. So that's how you handled the crap in life.

Adam: That's tremendous advice. And thank you for sharing such a personal anecdote, In our remaining time, I'm going to ask you some rapid-fire questions. Along the lines of what you were discussing with the way your husband, Alan, has impacted your business and your success over the course of your career. How can spouses and family members and friends who are closely together keep their personal and professional relationships strong?

Suzanne: Yeah, you have to really easy to get mad at the person closest to you and it's also unbelievably destructive. You've got put on your big boy pants or big girl pants and really try to see it from their perspective. You don't always have to be right and the more you do that, the more you respect one another and the more you back off and go, you know, you're right, you're right. Last time, you're right. This time, next time, maybe I'm right. You can ruin a business relationship by working with a relative or it can be the greatest experience ever. That's what I'm experiencing.

And then don't get stuck. You know, I've been got, I did home shopping and the shopping channels for 25 years. Really successful. Huge, huge business. But we're doing something different now. We've got a, our, our whole machinery in place. We've got our fulfillment and warehouse and you know, everything gets shipped out and everything. But I'm selling from home now. I do two Facebook live shows every week on Suzanne somers.com and like yesterday I did a gut health show. We will remove, everybody's had something wrong with it that everybody, the people listening to what, everybody shaking their head, I can feel it. Everybody, every constipated or bloated or gaining weight and they don't know why. And they're trying to not eat this and try and not eat that. Maybe I'm gluten intolerant, maybe I shouldn't have dairy. So we've, we've come up with this shake for gut health that has loaded, it's like taking 40 different supplements but you put them in a drink and the drink today split. But I did do it as a teaching, as a lecturer, I understand the gut. I've written so much about the gut. My next look after this one is about the gut. And by teaching they get mesmerized and telling them the truth and what my gut was doing and why am I like that? Look at my stomach. It's flat again now. And so great. You are noticing that I was putting on a little weight and so that works. And then like tonight I'm doing a show from our bar, which we do at least one of our shows from a bar.

So we decided to do that for our Facebook live show. And women don't like to drink alone. We still feel, you know, like it's not ladylike. So I invite them. Like tonight I will pop, come to my bar, let's have a drink together. And tonight I've got a thing called Suzanne Celeste. Once, once a month we put out a surprise box cause women also love to get a presence even if they pay for it themselves. And, and the men love to sit in because they like to sit there and imagine their owl and owl pours drinks. And sometimes if friends are over, we have the friends over and it's my constituency to come into our lives as though they're being invited to our house to drink and they love it and they drink a little tequila and they buy stuff for me, sending comments and we answer the comments when it lasts for an hour.

And then the next week we'll do two more and we do them two more. We're making more money than we're making off the shopping channels. So we don't have to give them the 61% and we've got the whole machinery all lined up already. And I looked at Alan and on, I think we moved along with the millennia. We're not stuck in an old form. The thing about the shopping channels now is that young people don't watch television at all. They're listening to podcasts like this. They're there. It's all a different way. And if you don't keep up with pop culture, if you don't keep moving on and reinventing, you get stuck and you get forgotten. So we're very viable in the fun.

Suzanne, I loved you on TV. I was a huge Three's Company fan. I actually watched Step By Step, but I love having you on as a guest because you've literally preempted all the questions I was going to ask with your great wisdom. I was going to ask you, I literally had written down, you are inducted into the infomercial hall of fame, which I don't know how many of our listeners know that. And I was going to ask, what are some of your best sales and marketing tips? And you literally just went into a masterclass on how we can improve our sales and marketing. Is there anything really quickly, because we are running down to our last few minutes that you would like to add on that topic and then I'm going to go back into rapid fire mode and ask you a few last questions.

Okay. And all negatives into positives. The reason we sold 10 million by masters is that I bought a pair of shoes in the 80s that cost $565. All they were these plain nude but perfect with toe cleavage and pointy toe and the right height heel. And I'm in my dressing room and I thought, Oh, I don't think I'm so stupid paying almost $6,600 for a pair of totally plain shoe. So I walk out in my new Manolo Blahniks plain shoes and my broad underpants. And I said, how do you like my new shoes? Great legs. Do you ever see these? The original Thighmaster commercial is to me in those shoes. I got to write the boss and with Alan off countless and great legs. The camera depends up my legs and I go, well, I used to find master.

Adam: That's great. What are some of your best tips for aspiring actors and actresses?

Suzanne: That's so hard. There's luck is of, is a component. You can be the most talented person in the world, but gotta in the right place at the right time. I had that luck clearly twice, almost like the universe put me there in a way that I never could have planned on myself. So it's not that you need to study. When I was Percy snow, I just believed that I was her when I was doing her. And Jack, Jack and Janet were the parents and I was a kid. And I tried to be a good girl and sometimes I wasn't. But I had a moral code of what I wouldn't, wouldn't do and I believe that I was hurt so much that the audience believes I was her. And when I would put on those clothes and lift up my shoulders and turn my knees in with a two ponytail, I would her and it was delicious.

So how do you find, you know, when I was offered dumb blonde, I would have taken apart. I thought, how do you make a dumb blonde, likable? Cause they're so annoying. And I think that I turned Chrissy snow into a lovable, dumb blonde. And so if you get the opportunity to get a good character, really think about how can you make that character lovable and likable. Al Pacino once said, but his acting, I find the worst thing about the nicest character I play and I find the nicest thing about the worst characterized place so that the audience has something to root for.

Adam: I like that. That's great. Agree completely. A big part of our conversation has been your journey from Suzanne Somers, actress to Suzanne Somers, thought leader, and you are able to pivot from playing the ultimate debts on TV to really doing some extraordinary work. I mean, you corrected me when you talked about the number of New York times bestselling books that you've written, which is incredible. How can listeners learn from your example and avoid getting typecast or pigeonholed?

Oh, that's not an easy answer because, because when it comes down to it goes, you're going to law school, you're going to be a lawyer or med school is going to be a doctor. You can study acting your whole life. You may never get one job. So it's a job that requires a belief in yourself and a perseverance. I think you have to really sit down back and take an honest look at yourself and do you have the stuff? And we usually know that inside. I knew I had this stuff. If you just give me an opportunity, I can do it. So believe in yourself. I know that's cliché, but you got to believe in yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, nobody will. And then hope that you find yourself in front of the right person at the right time. But today in today's world, there's, it's actually, there's something that's easier and that is how you use social media. How can you create your own show on TV? Look at the Kardashians. Look what they did. They took Oh, a group of good looking people and turned themselves into this mega success billionaire. He got to create your reality. I've created this reality on my Facebook live week. We've had shows where we've brought in over a million people. It's a phenomenal thing if only a third of them buy one thing with an app. You know, life is good.

Adam: I always tell people you are your brand. You create your own personal brand. The school you went to isn't your brand. The job you had isn't your brand. It's really the combination of everything you've done and everything that you want to be. That's your brand. Any final thoughts on how to stay young and live a happy, healthy and successful life?

Suzanne: Yeah. Well I just wrote a 400 pages. Not in this book, a new way to age. There's a new way. I always thought I'm 73. You can't lie about your age anymore. So I decided around 60 that I was going to sell my age. You can't lie cause you can, you know, mommy say how old you are. People Google you. So I turned my age into my assets and by keeping myself so healthy and in such you know, I, I've been doing yoga every other day for 19 years. You've got to exercise. You've got to just find one that you like. I replaced all the things that have declined in, in aging, like hormones and nutrients and minerals and, and the fact that we don't absorb nutrients and minerals and by being in that kind of balance, it makes you, you have a very strong libido and that opens up a whole new chapter. And I've got my husband, I'll do stuff on testosterone because men lose their hormones too. So I get him a testosterone shot every Tuesday. Don't call us on Wednesday. And you know, I say that because a healthy person is a sexual person. What's the last thing you feel like doing when you don't feel well you don't feel like having sex? So I try to talk about it, but also I talk about it to let people know women and men, it ain't over. It's not going to be over for me for a long time. And the earlier you start on making the right choices every day, whether it's the food you choose, it, chemicals you do or do not use or put on your, clean your house with your spray your house with the better your outcome. You want a good end point. You don't want to end up in a nursing home like everybody's expecting they are and start now. And that's what I've done. I see myself for another three decades at least, and I'm going to have a strong brain and strong bones and still going to be sitting with Big Al's bar, having it to feel and dancing from time to time.