Jill Whelan Reveals Pressure to Lose Weight on ‘The Love Boat’: ‘Had Me on 400 Calories a Day’

Actor Jill Whelan says life aboard The Love Boat for six seasons wasn’t always smooth sailing.

The actress, who grew up playing Captain Stubing’s daughter Vicki, has opened up about the heartbreaking pressures she faced as a teenager, including shocking attempts to trick her into losing weight.

In a recently resurfaced interview on Steve Kmetko’s Still Here Hollywood podcast which was filmed in 2024, the 59-year-old branded late producer Douglas S. Cramer “a misogynist.”

Recalling one incident involving her and fellow actress Lauren Tewes, Whelan said: ”We would come to a wardrobe fitting at a new season to get new uniforms and new evening gowns and new loungewear, and he would call the wardrobe department and tell them to buy everything one or two sizes smaller than we are so that we would come in and be embarrassed in fittings about things not fitting.”

Whelan was just 11 when she started working on the show, which ran from 1978 to 1987.

“I remember one time — and at that particular time I was going through puberty — and I had gone to a ‘fat farm’ or I guess we would say today a spa,” she recalled.

“I had lost some weight,” Whelan acknowledged. “I was also working with some crazy doctor who had me on 400 calories a day. It screws with your metabolism and everything.”

Whelan went on to enjoy further success on TV after The Love Boat, but revealed last year that she moved out of Hollywood and brings up her family in Arizona.

Producer Cramer, who also worked on Dynasty, Hotel, and Wonder Woman, died in June 2021.