By now, there are few stars who haven’t joined the ranks of reality TV in some capacity, but beginning in March, we’ll have another one.
Kirstie Alley, perhaps most famous for her role as Rebecca on Cheers or her starring role in Veronica’s Closet, has been in the perpetual spotlight in recent years for her ongoing struggle with weight, and now she’s taking advantage of reality TV to lose it.
A&E will bow Kirstie Alley’s Big Life on March 21 at 10 p.m. ET, after months of rumours that the Fat Actress star was developing a project with the network. Within the half-hour series, Alley hopes to lose weight and launch her own weight-loss company while she raises her two kids in front of the cameras.
Back in 2005 the 59-year-old actress became the spokesperson for Jenny Craig, and lost a whopping 75 pounds, which she displayed on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006, wearing nothing but a bikini.
But when Alley’s contract ended at the end of 2007, she gained the weight back, and in April of last year she made another appearance on Oprah to discuss why and how she fell off the wagon.
“I have all of these people that I inspired and then I let them down,” she told the talk show host. “I actually gained 10 more pounds than I had lost. I’ve always struggled, but when I lost the weight the last time, I honest to God thought, ‘This is it. I’ll never have to do this again.’”
At the time, the Emmy-winning actress also told Winfrey that she was in the middle of researching and developing her own weight-loss line, and had lost 20 pounds in the past five weeks doing that.
In addition to following the eventual launch of the weight-loss line, Alley’s show will also follow her life as a single mother, raising her two teenage kids in Hollywood — True, 17, and Lillie, 15.
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