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 across the United States, and other countries. Though the show was picked up by some stations, the producers were officially waiting for a launch group, with Fox and/or NBC being a possibility. According to the industry trade "TVNewsCheck", "many syndication observers say NBC stations and Fox stations may end up cherry-picking Jeff Probst and Ricki Lake in large TV markets". ("Survivor" host Probst debuted his daytime talk show in September 2012.) On November 8, 2011, Twentieth announced that 11 of Tribune Broadcasting's stations picked up the show, with WPIX/New York City using the show to replace "Anderson", which it lost