Dr. Pimple Popper’s family has to go elsewhere for — well, you know.
“I call myself a born-again pop-aholic in the sense that I understand why people like it,” the TLC star, née Sandra Lee, tells Page Six in a new interview.
To illustrate the point, Lee says she was once driving her then-14-year-old son to school and spotted a “really noticeable” blackhead in his ear.
“[You’d think] I would see it and I would say, ‘You’ve got to take care of that,’” she continued, “[but] I don’t really feel compelled.
“I know a lot of people who watch my show will chase their kids around the house for that, and I don’t really feel the need to.”
The 51-year-old Queens-born physician, who first started posting videos of her extractions and sunny bedside manner in 2010, admits she was “frankly shocked” when she discovered there was an audience for them.
“Shocked and fascinated,” she explains. “That’s what kept me going. I was like, ‘What is this? Why are people liking watching me videotape popping a cyst out of somebody or extracting blackheads? Let me just keep doing this, let me see what happens, and that’s really how it grew.”
Lee theorizes that fans — like Gwyneth Paltrow — love the show because “it’s like riding a roller coaster” and then at the end “you end up alive and happy and [have], like, this endorphin rush.
“I think it’s very satisfying for people, especially people that like things in their place. And when you see something that’s out of place, it’s very satisfying to see it resolve, right?”
The dermatologist also promises that this season has “some really big pops” — and some tears, too.
“So many people get really emotional after, you know, when we’re saying goodbye, and that really tells me how much of a significant impact we have on them,” she notes.
“You’re going to see a lot of things that you haven’t seen before. Dermatology is not just about, you know, pimple popping per se. There are definitely other kinds of things you’re going to see that we’re popping off of people.”
“Dr. Pimple Popper” Season 7 premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on TLC.