12 biggest reveals about your fave nostalgic stars on ‘Oprah: Where Are They Now?’

Debbie Gibson isn’t so squeaky clean

Debbie Gibson was an ’80s teen dream with a squeaky-clean image, but in the wake of Prince’s death by overdose of prescription medication, she confessed to the show about her own drug issues.

“I remember being on the road at, like, 25, touring with theater and doing my own cocktail of Tylenol PM and Xanax,” she admitted. 

Gibson said she wanted to get off her own “high horse” because “performers use prescription medications to get through their careers and their lives and to get a good night’s sleep and to get that body on the stage because they have to deliver.”

“It’s a really serious problem, and it’s as prevalent if not more prevalent maybe than it is with athletes,” she said. “The athletic community takes all this heat and gets all this attention.”

Horrible timing

This might be one of the saddest stories on the OWN show. Everyone knows about Aaron Carter’s battle with addiction, but life at home was rough, too. He told Oprah producers how his parents told him about their divorce.

“[On the day] I did [MTV’s] Cribs, that was the day my mother and father told me they were divorcing and I was no longer going to be at that property,” he explained. “[They said,] ‘We’re divorcing, it’s official, you need to pick which parent you want to live with.'”

Right after he received the life-altering news, Carter had to shoot the MTV show and act like there was nothing wrong. 

Geri Halliwell eating disorder

Geri Halliwell is better known to Spice Girl fans as Ginger Spice, but her time with the girl group wasn’t that easy. She admitted to the show that she battled an eating disorder at the height of her fame.

“I’d either be on a diet or comfort eating. There was a time when I started being bulimic,” she said. “No one would notice it because your body weight stays pretty much the same. It’s bloody dangerous.”

The pressures of fame eventually got the best of her, and she left the band in 1998. It took a 12-step program to help her deal with her eating disorder a few years after her Spice Girls exit.

The new kid in town

Jeremy Miller was the cute but pesky little brother on Growing Pains until someone stole his thunder. He explained that Leonardo DiCaprio’s addition to the show wasn’t easy for him.

“There was a little competition there. I have to admit, it bothered me a little bit that the network felt it necessary to bring him in rather than focusing on my character, who had now grown up,” Miller said. “That was a little weird.”

Miller didn’t let his own insecurities affect his friendship with DiCaprio, though. He said they were “good friends on the set” because they were close in age.

A total loss

Josie Bissett shot to fame in the ’90s with the success of Melrose Place. She left Hollywood behind and moved her family up to the Seattle area for a life outside of the entertainment industry. Unfortunately, tragedy struck her home in June 2015.

The propane tank on her barbecue exploded, and her home suffered major damage. While Bissett is grateful that her entire family made it out alive, she is still suffering from the loss.

“Every time I walk in, I think it’s going to be easier,” she tearfully told Oprah: Where Are They Now? “And it’s just not. I guess the best way to describe it is this feeling of violation.”

He’s done with his cheating ways

D.L. Hughley might not be the most sensitive person in Hollywood, and he proved that with his admission of infidelity to his wife of 26 years, LaDonna Hughley.

In 2012, D.L. admitted that it had happened numerous times during their marriage, but what he said to Oprah: Where Are They Now? shows that his views have not have changed that much.

“I think more than anything else, I just felt entitled to be able to do it,” D.L. said. “I felt like that my whole life. So, I think monogamy is what you give your woman so she don’t leave. I don’t think that it’s a natural condition, at all.”

A hidden addiction

On an episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now? special, Genie Francis shared why she left General Hospital at the height of her fame. At 19 years old, the daytime star walked away from the role while she was battling a drug and alcohol addiction. While that wasn’t revealed at the time of her departure, it explained her fragile mental state.

“I was having trouble with drugs and alcohol. I ended up one night in the hospital. The very next day, I was told, ‘I’m sorry, you’re going to have to come back to work tomorrow morning,'” she says in the video clip. “So I got back to work, and somebody came up to my door and knocked. It was an awful moment in which I was told, ‘You know what they said about you? They said it didn’t matter if you lived or you died because Tony was the whole show.'”

After a brief cameo in 1983, Francis returned to the GH cast in 1993.

He’s very different from Tori

Randy Spelling has left Los Angeles for a simpler life in Portland, Oregon, where he works as a life coach. It’s far removed from Spelling Manor, the 123-room mansion where he spent his teen years.

“My life is really different from how I grew up. It’s definitely more quiet and more simple,” he said to the OWN show. “I’m a husband, I’m a father of two amazing girls.”

It’s a life he adopted after his father, Aaron Spelling, passed away and left him less than a million dollars in his will.

“I don’t know what really happened with my father’s will,” said Spelling. “I think, to a lot of people, it was probably out of balance considering what he had…. Would it have been nice to have been left a whole lot of money? Yes, [but] things happen the way that they need to. And my life right now might look very different if I had $10 million sitting in the bank.”

A psychotic break made him paranoid

Creed frontman Scott Stapp had everyone worried in 2014 when he went on a Facebook rant that made very little sense at the time. His son blamed his father’s drug and alcohol addiction, but it turns out the problem was bigger than that. Stapp had a serious mental health issue.

He told the show that his “nightmare began to end” once his wife found a treatment program that would not only deal with his addiction issues but also get him a diagnosis of his mental illness.

“Under their care, I was diagnosed bipolar, and it began to give us answers and clarity on the last 18 years — 18 years of battling this disease,” he explained. “Life didn’t have to be the highs and lows that it had become.”

A talk show turned tabloid show

Sally Jessy Raphael was known for her signature red glasses and her talk show, which featured human-interest stories. That all changed in the ’90s when her show’s focus shifted to tabloid topics. It’s something she’s not proud of.

“The last years of doing those Maury Povich/Jerry Springer shows, I hated,” she said. “I was betrayed by some of the producers into doing that.”

In hindsight, Raphael wishes she had stuck to her guns about the show’s topics and stayed true to her authentic self as a talk show host.

“I should have fought harder for what I knew was right, what I knew that I didn’t want to do,” Raphael explained.

The show was cancelled in 2002 after almost two decades on the air.

The Snapple Lady does coke

In the ’90s, it was hard to turn on the TV without seeing Wendy Kaufman as “The Snapple Lady” talking about the company’s teas and fruit drinks. Her cheerful persona makes you think she’d be the last person you would expect to have a cocaine addiction, but that’s exactly what happened. And it’s the Snapple gig that saved her.

“I started to do cocaine in 1980 right after I graduated from college. By 1989, I could press my cheek and blood would come out of my nose. I was so sick that it really brought me to my knees… I said to God, hysterically crying, ‘Either kill me or please, please help me get well. I cannot live like this one second longer.'”

Kaufman said the Snapple job saved her life, “[It] was much more than a job. It was a lifeline, it was a way for me to stay sober and a vehicle to do wonderful, nice things for other people.”

Sandy and Frenchy are real-life BFFs

It’s every Grease fan’s dream come true! In real life, Didi Conn, who played Frenchy in the 1978 film, and Olivia Newton-John are real-life BFFs. It’s kind of the greatest thing to come out of the Oprah: Where Are They Now? show that doesn’t involve anything salacious or tawdry — it’s a true happy ending! 

“I really, really had fun with Olivia Newton-John,” Conn said. “She was nervous. Her first shot was with me. Before the cameras even were rolling, I was saying, ‘Oh, I’m so glad you moved here from Australia, and I’m going to be your best friend.'” 

That friendship turned out to be lifelong. “We started a friendship that is to this very day, which I’m so grateful for.” 

Now we just want to know if Frenchy is still doing Sandy’s hair — and remember, pink hair is everything.