Ricki Lake Reveals the Real Reason She Quit Her Talk Show At Its Peak: ‘I Had an Epiphany’

Ricki Lake has reflected on the deeply personal reason she chose to walk away from her long-running daytime series at the height of its success.

Her eponymous show, which aired from 1993 to 2004, could have continued much longer, but for Lake, everything changed after September 11, 2001.

“I could have done it for probably a decade longer,” the Hairspray actress, 57, admitted on the On Par with Maury Povich podcast on Monday, April 27.

“I made that choice, 9/11 was a huge trajectory shift in my life,” she continued. “Every aspect of my life changed from witnessing that experience that day from my West Village apartment. I was so freaked out watching that plane fly down the Hudson and hit that building.”

“I had a 2-month-old and a 4-year-old. I was a lactating new mother protecting my cubs,” she pointed out of Milo, now 29, and Owen, now 24. “I just felt like the world was coming to an end that day, and I had an epiphany on the roof of my building, as I watched it all unfold, that I would leave New York, that I would leave my job, and I would leave, ultimately, my marriage.”

“And it took a lot of planning, it took a couple of years to finish my contract — I couldn’t walk away from my show — but I knew I wasn’t going to renew beyond that, the term that I had agreed to,” the Dancing with the Stars alum told host Maury Povich, 87.

Lake and her husband Rob Sussman separated in 2003, finalizing their divorce a year later. She relocated to the West Coast and shifted her focus behind the camera, producing projects including the documentary The Business of Being Born. She eventually hosted another talk show from 2012 to 2013.