The tabloid press has hounded Kirstie Alley for years regarding her struggle with weight. Kirstie says it's led her to a new opportunity—her Showtime series, Fat Actress, where she portrays a character with experiences similar to her own.
Oprah: What does it mean to you to have your weight struggles in tabloids?
Kirstie: Well, I guess it means a new show!
Oprah: It's all good, because if somebody's writing about you, if you're interesting enough for a bunch of editors and some people to sit down at their computers and make up stories about you, it must be that something's going on that's good for you. Really.
Kirstie: I think it means you're hot!
Kirstie has two children, ages 10 and 12, with ex-husband Parker Stevenson. Kirstie said she began to gain weight after Cheers and before she began Veronica's Closet, but really started to gain when she decided to take some time off.
"For the last four years, I thought, 'I'm going to take some time off and I'm going to be a terrific mother,'" Kirstie says. "'I'm going to be the best mother I can possibly be.' And, for me, being the best mother I could be, obviously, was holiday cooking! For me, a holiday lasts from, you know, right before Halloween until Valentine's Day."
After seeing herself in numerous tabloid stories, Kirstie said her actual "fat moment" came to her on a much more personal level.
"My real moment was about eight months ago," Kirstie says. "I got out of the car at a hotel and the valet person said, 'When are you due?' And I just said, '11 weeks!' … It hasn't been really painful, but I think the hardest part is that I spent most of my life thin, you know? [Now] it's an effort to get dressed, whereas before I would just go, 'Ooh, I look good in these jeans.'"
Kirstie says that her weight holds her back from something she really enjoys…sex!
"Well, I don't want to have fat sex, you know," Kirstie says. "I've been celibate for four-and-a-half years, because I think I've become like a born-again virgin. It's by choice. Even when [I was thinner], I wondered what I looked like when I'm walking in [the room]. I was sort of inhibited. Now, I know what I look like, and I just can't see some guy's eyes going, 'Oh, my God!'"
Kirstie says that no matter her weight, she knows that only she can be the one responsible for controlling her weight issues.
"I feel fortunate," Kirstie says. "I think you should sort of spend 80 percent of the time living your life and creating a beautiful life for yourself and others around you, helping people. Then, maybe 20 percent of your life worrying about what you look like. And if you get to a certain weight, you can forget it!"
