How ‘Three’s Company’ Star Suzanne Somers Fought Back Against Her Abusive Father—and Changed Her Life Forever

There was a defining moment in the life of Suzanne Somers that had nothing to do with starring in and departing from Three’s Company, selling the Thighmaster or valiantly fighting back against the cancer that would ultimately take her away. Instead, it was a confrontation with her abusive father that changed everything.

As she explained in an exclusive conversation, she grew up thoroughly believing that she was “stupid” and incapable of learning anything, with insecurity filling much of her waking day. And yet she points to a pivot that altered everything: money being as tight as it was, her mother had sewn her junior prom dress, much to the delight her daughter.

“I remember we picked up sequins for the top—I’ve always loved sequins—and two layers of chiffon for the skirt. One was pink, the other peach, and I couldn’t wait. I went to bed dreaming about it. But one night, my father came into my room super drunk and started ripping my dress into pieces,” shared Somers. “My mother came in screaming, ‘Are you crazy?’ and he punched her in the breast, knocking her down to the floor. I picked up my tennis racket and, with all my might, I brought it down on his head. I’m 16 years old and my father is beating up my mother. I’m absolutely powerless and he was a champion prizefighter, but I did give him a concussion. And a lot of stitches. From there on in, I was still afraid of my father, but what I realized later is that he was afraid of me, because for that one moment I got the attitude of, ‘I’ll show you. You cannot do this anymore.'”

It’s that attitude that drove her through much of her life, accepting challenges thrown her way and using them to reinvent herself “over and over again. I’ve taken every big fist that has come my way and turned it into rocket fuel. Kind of, like, ‘Oh, yeah? Let me show you!’

“Sometimes, the worst things in life become your rocket fuel to get you through them, because there is no life without big fist events,” she added. “You’ve had them, I’ve had them, you will have more, I will have more. You can either be a victim when these things happen to you or you can dust yourself off and ask, ‘How can I learn from this? How can I grow from this? Where’s the lesson?’ I’ve used this throughout my life and career.”

The early days of her journey

Born Suzanne Marie Mahoney on October 16, 1946, in San Bruno, California, right from early on, her life was not an easy one due to her “bad” alcoholic father. “I remember being berated over and over again as a child,” she said, “and I realized how bullies have to bully you to stay with you: ‘You’re nothing, you’re stupid, you’re hopeless, you’re worthless, you’re a piece of crap.’ And I absolutely believed it.”

Sadly, the only escape seemed to be a dark closet. “When things were really bad, we hid in that closet most nights,” Somers details. “But during the day, if it was really bad, you crawled way in the back of that closet where it was really dark. At the time, the priests or missionaries were all looking for money and they used to send these envelopes to my mother to get money out of the $60 a week she had. As a good Catholic, she sent something and as a gift to her, they would send these glow-in-the-dark rosary beads. So I would take the rosary beads to the back of the closet, look at them and I’d have a specific vision.”

That vision was fueled by the fact that when she was little, drilled into her head—and those of millions of others—was the notion that everybody had to do their part in fighting communists. “I didn’t know what communists were, but apparently they needed fighting,” Somers laughed, “so I used to have this vision that I went to the top of a hill where all the communists were, and I—Suzanne Mahoney at the time—said to the communists, ‘Why do you want to fight?’ and they looked at me and said, ‘You know what? You’re right.’ And I brought about world peace. Doesn’t that show the triumph of the human spirit in its lowest form?”

Another form of emotional release came for her while, after getting kicked out of Catholic school for wearing her skirts too short, attending San Francisco’s Cappuccino High School. There she joined the fine arts department, resulting in her getting the lead in the show Guys and Dolls, the 16-year-old scoring the part of Adelaide and actually feeling herself morph into the character. “I’d never studied acting or anything, but, man, did I get who she was,” Somers noted.

As things turned out, enormously popular newspaper and radio columnist Walter Winchell attended the show’s final performance. Said Somers, “While we’re getting our standing ovation, up walks this guy on stage in a trench coat and porkpie hat. He comes right over to me and he says, ‘You’re going someplace, sister,’ and because of that, I got a scholarship to college. And I’m the first one in my family to go to college and, man, did I choose the wrong college, because I was so indoctrinated by all the Catholic schools that I took my scholarship at a Catholic girls’ school.”

But that summer, she found herself pregnant by her boyfriend Bruce Somers. “We had sex once! Well, at the time, if you got pregnant, you had to get married. I was thrown out of school and sent away from home in shame. Now I’m married and have a baby, who I adore, but I hate being married. And I hate that I feel I missed out on something, though I don’t know what it is. I divorced my husband and it was shameful for my family, shameful for the small town and I moved further away. It was just me and my little boy.”

Promise given, promise kept

She remembered the moment her son Bruce was placed in her arms for the first time and the quiet promise she made to give him a good life—and she meant it. With no roadmap and no safety net, she figured out how to provide for him however she could, selling homemade chocolate desserts to restaurants in Sausalito, California and sewing children’s dresses to sell on consignment. “I figured it out by the seat of my pants,” she recalled, determined to make sure her son grew up safe, loved and grounded despite the challenges she faced as a young, single mother. That drive—that instinctive, I’ll show you spirit — continued to be the foundation for everything she built afterward.

By 1973, Suzanne’s life was pivoting. She had married Alan Hamel, and she was starting to imagine a future beyond scraping by. One day, flipping through the Hollywood trades she could barely afford, she noticed a listing for The Dom DeLuise Show seeking a guest star described as “a small-town girl who doesn’t know who she is and doesn’t know what she looks like.” Suzanne thought, That’s me. With no real acting resume and nothing but nerve, she found her way onto a studio lot and auditioned—well enough that they told her she’d been called back, a term she learned on the spot.

While waiting in the commissary and too broke to order anything, she suddenly found herself face-to-face with Tonight Show host Johnny Carson. He recognized the show she was reading for and wished her luck. It was an unlikely moment of encouragement for someone so new to Hollywood, and in the end, she got the part.

Suzanne also recalled that, in the middle of those early struggles, she had quietly written a book of poetry “because I was sad.” Against the odds, it was published, and when she had crossed paths with Johnny Carson, she handed him a copy because she didn’t even have an 8×10 photo. Two days later, she was booked on The Tonight Show.

So, standing backstage, she assumed Carson must have loved her poetry. Instead, she heard him tell the audience, “We’ve all been wondering who the mysterious blonde in the Thunderbird is in American Graffiti. Well, we found her.” The curtain opened, the crowd cheered and Suzanne sat down, stunned. “He loved me because I was so unpolished,” she later reflected. That first appearance turned into monthly bookings, and before long she was making her living on The Tonight Show—and with her little book of poems, unexpectedly became a bestseller, right alongside Rod McKuen. Much of that had to do with the success of director George Lucas‘ 1973 Graffiti.

Come and knock on their door

ABC television programmer Fred Silverman was one of the people who had watched Somers on The Tonight Show and instantly felt that she would be perfect for the role of Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company, which had been in development at the time. Posed Somers, “Was any of this planned? No. Was the universe guiding me? I think so. With the incredible start I received on Three’s Company, I learned that, man, I’m talented. I didn’t realize it. And then when I went to Vegas and was named Entertainer of the Year, it was, like, ‘I’m talented,’ and I didn’t know that, because I never had anybody propping me up with positive reinforcement.”

Starring alongside John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt, Three’s Company instantly became a ratings juggernaut and one of the biggest TV hits of the 1970s. But by Season 5, things derailed for Somers. Many claim that she and Hamel, who was now her manager in addition to her husband, had made unreasonable demands for a partial ownership of the show and a substantial raise.

Somers remembered the turning point clearly. The night before contract talks on Three’s Company, someone from ABC warned privately, “They’re going to hang a nun in the marketplace, and it’s going to be Suzanne.” Hamel left for the meeting with a rare moment of doubt, telling her, “This could blow us out of the water.” She reassured him—in her mind, it was a standard negotiation. But when he returned home later that day, she knew from the way the door opened that it wasn’t good news. “You’re out,” he told her gently. ABC hadn’t come to negotiate; they’d come to fire her. The shock was immediate, followed by a long stretch of licking wounds and second-guessing. Eventually, she found her footing again and told Alan she wanted to try a Las Vegas act. He walked into the MGM Grand and secured a two-year deal on the spot, insisting she would succeed even if she stumbled at first—and she ended up earning more there than she ever asked for on Three’s Company.

The actress reflected, “I now get that these careers are highs and lows and you don’t learn anything when you’re high. You learn when you’re low. That’s when you have time to sit back and think and realize that when you hit the top of the mountain, there’s nowhere to go further up. You can only start going down, and that’s the time to go left or right and reinvent. I’ve actively reinvented myself over and over and I’ve taken every big fist that has come my way and turned it into rocket fuel. Again, kind of, like, ‘Oh, yeah? Let me show you!’” Which is exactly what she did.

Life after ‘Three’s Company’

Getting pushed out of Three’s Company could have been the kind of crash-and-burn moment that ends a career, but Suzanne Somers refused to let it define her. Her success in Vegas led to television specials, talk-show appearances and a gradual shift into becoming a multimedia personality at a time when that idea barely existed.

Then came her third act, which might be the one future generations remember most. Somers reinvented herself yet again in the 1990s and beyond as a lifestyle mogul, wellness advocate and author of bestselling books on fitness, hormones and nutrition. Her infomercial empire—including the now-iconic ThighMaster—turned her into the poster child for reinvention and self-branding. She returned to primetime on ABC’s Step by Step, became a fixture on shopping networks and leaned into entrepreneurship, alternative health and longevity messaging right up until her passing in 2023.

If Suzanne Somers’ early career was about finding a foothold, the decades after Three’s Company were about proving she didn’t need one as she could build the whole platform herself. “I have gratitude for it all,” she warmly shared. “I think when you live in gratitude, it leaves room for little else. And that’s why my head is not filled with negatives. I look at all the disastrous marriages around me over my journey that have fallen apart, and I look at the fact that I’ve been with Alan for 50 years and I’m in love. It’s a mad, crazy, passionate love affair. What else do you want in life?”