#Suzanne Somers’ Husband Reflects on ‘Three’s Company’ Salary Fight

Suzanne Somers will be remembered most for her iconic TV characters and her reign as a fitness queen, but some of her most important work occurred behind the scenes, including her brave refusal to accept less than equal pay as for her work on Three’s Company.

After four seasons on ABC’s Emmy-winning comedy series, the actress — who died Sunday at age 76 — had become the show’s “breakout star,” friend Sue Cameron tells PEOPLE.

“She did American Graffiti and the picture of her in that car in American Graffiti got her everything,” said Cameron, a former director of daytime television for ABC. “When she got Three’s Company, she exploded as a star, and she really was the one.”

In light of her success, Somers believed she should receive a significant pay hike from $30,000 an episode to $150,000 an episode, which would put her at equal standing with her male costar John Ritter.

The year was 1981, and Somers’ request was not well-received.

Her husband, former TV producer Alan Hamel, claimed he received a mysterious late-night phone call at the time.

“A man I didn’t know introduced himself,” recalls Hamel, “and he said, ‘I’m a very good friend of your very good friend. I came out of a meeting today, and they have decided to hang a nun in the marketplace, and Suzanne Somers is going to be it.”

When Hamel, 87, demanded an explanation, the tipster explained executives wanted “to stop women from demanding to be paid what men are making.”

Somers was fired the morning after, according to Hamel. His first thought was: “You just destroyed some of the greatest chemistry on television.”

Somers was distraught over the decision at the time, later telling Entrepreneur in 2020: “I didn’t plan to be the unofficial first feminist when I demanded equal pay.”

Other actresses were brought in to replicate the archetype of Somers’ character Chrissy Snow, but the show never fully recovered. Hollywood, meanwhile, had labeled Somers a sort of showbiz pariah, and TV work was hard to come by for years for the once-sought after actress.

After she was fired, Somers became unmoored. “I probably would have never left network series,” she told PEOPLE in 2020. “I would have kept on going and probably been in every sitcom after that were it not to end the way it ended. But I was ostracized. So I went away.”

With Hamel’s help, however, Somers reinvented herself. “I’d love to have a show in Las Vegas,” she confessed to her husband.

The actress spent the next several years living and performing in the city, headlining at venues like the old MGM Grand (now Horseshoe Las Vegas), where she landed a two-year deal. She eventually found her way back to television, appearing in the 1985 miniseries Hollywood Wives and landing another starring role in 1991 opposite Dallas heartthrob Patrick Duffy in the family sitcom Step by Step, which aired for seven seasons until 1998.

Hamel became Somers’ manager in the early 1980s to help her land more career-oriented, long-term deals. The two struck gold when they bought the rights for the ThighMaster, which became a national sensation and elevated Somers to fitness icon status on par with Jane Fonda.

“We realized every woman alive at some point would love a ThighMaster,” Hamel tells PEOPLE. “We went back to the group that owned the rights, we made the deal, changed the color combination, called it a ThighMaster, produced the commercial, and we were off and running. And the very first day it became a huge success.”

Somers also prudently expanded her business in the years that followed to include dozens of products, including essential oils and air purifiers, although her work took a backseat once the breast cancer that she had first been diagnosed with in 2000 returned in 2023.

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More than four decades after her run on Three’s Company was unceremoniously cut short, Hamel tells PEOPLE his wife would want to be remembered for her work as the “delicious character” of Chrissy.

“She brought joy into everybody’s heart with that character. It was lovable and beautiful, and it was exactly what she wanted,” he says, comparing the show to classic sitcoms including I Love Lucy. “It’ll play forever.”