Ricki Lake Ricki Lake Ricki Pamela Lake (born September 21, 1968) is an American actress, television presenter and producer. Lake is best known for her lead role as Tracy Turnblad in the 1988 film Hairspray. She is also known for her talk show which was broadcast internationally from September 1993 until May 2004. When Lake's show debuted, she was 24 and credited as being the youngest person to host a syndicated talk show at the time. In autumn 2012, Lake embarked on a second syndicated talk show project "The Ricki Lake Show" (dubbed as "The New Ricki Lake Show"), which aired on
The Ricki Lake Show five new talk shows to premiere during the 2012–2013 television season, "Ricki Lake" ranked fourth, behind "Katie", "Steve Harvey", and "The Jeff Probst Show", but ahead of "The Trisha Goddard Show". "Katie", "Probst", and "Trisha" have since been cancelled, leaving "Harvey" as the only one to successfully do well in the ratings. During the week of November 5, 2012, "Ricki Lake" averaged 924,000 viewers. Global picked up the program for Canada, which debuted the program on September 10, 2012, the same date as the US airing. The series has also been acquired by FX (UK) who will air the show