Ricki Lake Has Made Millions, Focuses on New Podcast Coming This Fall
Ricki Lake still has a multimillion-dollar net worth in 2022, and the former talk-show host is still active in the entertainment business.
April 4 2022, Published 1:13 p.m. ET
One of the most popular talk show hosts of the 1990s, Ricki Lake has been in the public eye for her entire adult life. She played the lead in the 1988 film version of Hairspray, hosted her self-titled talk show Ricki Lake from 1993 until 2004, and was on Dancing With the Stars and The Masked Singer. Ricki Lake’s net worth is around $25 million today.
Ricki Lake
Talk Show Host, Actress, Producer
Net worth: $25 Million
Ricki Lake is an actress and television host. She has appeared in various reality shows over a show business career spanning over 30 years. Her first movie role was as the lead Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray in 1988. In addition to other film and TV roles, Lake landed her own talk show at 24 years old, and Ricki Lake aired from 1993–2004. Her second self-titled talk show aired in 2012, and she won a Daytime Emmy for her hosting.
Birthdate: September 21, 1968
Education: Ithaca College (one year only)
Spouse: Ross Burningham (married January 2022)
Former Spouses: Christian Evans (2012–2015); Rob Sussman (1994–2004)
Children: 2
Ricki Lake at the CNN Heroes All-Star Tribute in 2008.
What is Ricki Lake doing now?
Lake has been an entertainer for over 30 years. Her leading role in Hairspray garnered her a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. By age 24, she was the youngest person at the time to have a syndicated talk show, and her program ran for over a decade.
Since the end of that talk show, Lake has been busy with various acting and television endeavors. She produced and appeared in The Business of Being Born, documenting the real birth of her son.
Abby Epstein, who directed "The Business of Being Born," with Lake, who produced the documentary.
Some of her TV appearances:
China Beach
The King of Queens
Drop Dead Diva
Charm School with Ricki Lake
Dancing With the Stars
The Masked Singer
Ricki Lake recently got married for the third time.
Lake has been married three times, the first being to Rob Sussman, primarily during the height of her talk show Ricki Lake. She and Sussman share two children together, and they got divorced in 2004.
Her second marriage was to Christian Evans. They married in 2012, and by 2015, that marriage also ended in divorce. In 2017, the media learned Evans had died by suicide.
In January 2022, Lake announced via Twitter that she had married fiancé Ross Burningham. The 53-year-old and her new husband were dressed casually for what appeared to be a beach ceremony.
Ricki Lake’s new podcast will launch in the fall of 2022.
Lake is working on a podcast entitled Raised by Ricki, which Deadline says is slated for a fall 2022 launch. Partnering with Lemonada Media, Lake will dive into her early life and how she got into show business, as well as look back at the successful run of her talk show.
Lemonada recently raised $8 million in funding from investors like Alan Patricof’s Greycroft. Its CEO Jessica Cordova Kramer said of Lake, “She quite literally raised us after school, and informed how we see the world.”