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Jamie Lee Curtis Surprised by the emotional message from Susan Bout.
Appearing on Tuesday, December 2 during todayCurtis, 67, talks to the host Craig Melvin About her work in documentaries Stop the Madness: Searching for Susan Bout. Melvin, 46, said that when talking to Bout, 67, about the documentary, which was released last month, she had a special message for Curtis, the project’s executive producer.
“She lit up this studio just like you. She was so grateful for you,” he said Tuesday. “That’s what she said. She gave you something.”
Curtis looked confused and asked, “Did she send me something?”
Susan Powter is completely transparent about her struggles with benefits in her new documentary, Stop the Madness: The Search for Susan Powter. The film, which opens in select theaters on Wednesday, November 19, reveals the story of “Fitness Queen” Bout’s public disappearance in the mid-1990s after she lost her fitness empire and declared bankruptcy. This documentary was produced by (…)
The show then cuts to a recording of Bout expressing her gratitude to Curtis.
“My hand is in yours and I’m so grateful,” Bout said in the video. “The only thing we have in this life is our time, our energy and our love, and you gave those three things to thousands of people. Thank you Jamie Lee Curtis.”
While watching the video, Curtis was visibly choked up and fighting back tears.
“That’s why we’re here,” she said through tears.
Before seeing Powter’s clip, Curtis reflected on how she always wanted to play Powter in a project before another opportunity came along.
“Of course, as a young actress, I was like, ‘Of course I’m going to play her.’ Shaved head, blonde, energetic…ugh!” she reflected, noting the similarities between the two. “One day when my friends at Newman asked me, ‘Do you remember Susan Bout?'”
Curtis shared that she, of course, got to know Bout during her “heyday” through her “Stop the Crazy” TV commercial. Bout rose to fame in the early ’90s for sharing her personal story of being a housewife and mother who gained weight after a divorce but changed her lifestyle through diet and exercise. People called the program and paid for Bout’s workout tips and recipes.
The friend then told her that Ball worked as a delivery driver in Las Vegas. (After a series of bad business deals and various lawsuits, Ball lost his fortune.)
“He said, ‘You know she’s doing Uber Eats in Vegas, and I said to him, ‘I’m going to send you money today to get on a plane and film her.'” And that’s how the documentary started,” she recalled.
In the 2025 documentary “Stop the Madness: The Search for Susan Bout,” Susan Bout gets brutally candid about her decades-long financial troubles. The former fitness guru starred in iconic sports TV commercials and hosted his own syndicated daytime talk show in the early 1990s, before leaving Hollywood entirely in the space of a few years. (…)
In Stop the Madness: The Search for Susan Bout, the fitness enthusiast talks about her struggles and recalls being on welfare before landing a delivery job.
“There’s not a job I haven’t done in the last ten years,” she tells the camera as she works. “I’m excited to get a job at Uber Eats.”
Bout explains that she doesn’t need a lot of money to be happy, she just wants enough to pay for basic necessities.
“I just want to survive, rise above this and get what’s mine,” she said in the document. “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.”
