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Producers of The Jerry Springer Show would threaten not to fly guests home if they stormed off and refused to return for the show’s final panel, a new documentary alleges.
The two-part docuseries Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action is now streaming on Netflix.
Threats to not pay for flights home for uncooperative guests were particularly effective as many were of a lower socioeconomic class and afraid of being stranded in Chicago.
It is just one of several examples cited in the documentary of how producers sought to provoke and incite their guests, which often resulted in screaming matches and thrown furniture on air.
One guest, named Melanie, tells the documentary that a producer provoked her to such an extent that: “The whole time I was in the dressing room, I was just getting angrier and angrier by the second, and I am not an angry person.
“My heart was pounding. I felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. I was tired, crazy, ready to f*** it up. They weren’t treating you sensitively. They weren’t interested in what kind of impact it was going to have on you. It was all for the show.”
The Independent’s Louis Chilton recently spoke to the director of Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, Luke Sewell, as well as two of the original series’ producers to find out more about working on the chat show that was both revered and reviled.
“When I first saw Jerry Springer as a teenager, I was dumbfounded,” British filmmaker Sewell told The Independent. “It seemed like TV from another planet – this wild, crazy trainwreck that you couldn’t not look at.”
The series, he continued, made its name “exploiting guests for people’s entertainment, and ultimately just for ratings. It contributed absolutely nothing positive to society in any way, and in many ways was incredibly negative.”
Toby Yoshimura, a producer during the show’s heyday, told The Independent that his time on the show led to a spiral of drinking and cocaine addiction.
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“My personal demons are out there on the documentary,” he said. “I’ve forgiven myself for all of that time all of that s***. And I don’t regret anything that I was part of on that show. I was there, right when it got super crazy. If you want to outline my involvement, I’m probably responsible for some of the chaos.”
