The new Netflix documentary ‘Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action’ explores the making of the controversial talk show. 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.
![[Jerry Springer hosting his controversial TV show]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/06/16/newFile-4.jpg)
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.”.
“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.”.
