Ricki Lake, ex-talk show icon, tells how 9/11 attack made her leave NYC

Ricki Lake, whose eponymous talk show’s ratings were outstripped only by Oprah Winfrey’s in their respective heydays, has opened up about what made her leave New York City in the early 2000s.

It was witnessing the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, while home with her two small children that marked a “huge trajectory shift in my life,” the “Hairspray” star told fellow former daytime talk show host Maury Povich on Tuesday’s episode of his podcast, “On Par with Maury Povich.” “Every aspect of my life changed from witnessing that experience that day from my West Village apartment,” she said.

For nearly 10 years she had reigned on the daytime talk show scene, and could have gone 10 more. But that changed in an instant, she said.

“I was so freaked out watching that plane fly down the Hudson and hit that building,” Lake told Povich. “I had a 2-month-old and a 4-year-old. So I was a lactating new mother protecting my cubs, you know? I mean, I just felt like the world was coming to an end that day. And I said to myself — I had an epiphany on the roof of my building as I watched it all unfold — that I would leave New York.”

That day led her not only to leave the show at the height of its popularity but also “ultimately leave my marriage,” Lake said.

After her existing contract ran out — “Ricki Lake” ran from 1992 to 2004 — and she had tied up other loose ends, the self-dethroned talk show goddess decamped to California and started making documentaries, starting with “The Business of Being Born,” a film about childbirth. She’s since moved back to New York after losing her house and all her possessions in the devastating 2025 fires outside Los Angeles.

Lake, 57, and Povich, 87, also reminisced about the glory days of talk shows during the 1990s and early 2000s. Then a 24-year-old newbie, Lake landed in a field crowded with mostly 40- and 50-something hosts. When she immediately scooped up “the youngest audience of us all,” Povich told Lake, “We were scared s—less.”