The story behind Netflix’s Jerry Springer documentary

Fthat broke out all the time The Jerry Springer ShowThe NBC talk show that ran from 1991 to 2018, where guests continued to discuss their deepest, darkest secrets and confront their greatest enemies.

But the drama that unfolded on TV was only half the story. In the two-part documentary, Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, ActionJan. 7 on Netflix, former producers reveal what went into creating the show and how they prepared guests for those battles. Springer died in 2023 and none of them have a bad word to say about him. But there’s so much trash talk among the producers about how the show was run that it’s surprising it doesn’t break out in the docu-series itself.

Here’s a look at the juiciest tidbits about what went into the making The Jerry Springer Show.

The goal of The Jerry Springer Show

Springer, a former news anchor who served as mayor of Cincinnati from 1977 to 1978, originally wanted to host a serious show and had dreams of running for Congress. Instead of becoming a politician, he became the subject of the politicians’ inquiries: Jerry Springer includes footage of a Chicago City Council hearing on the show’s violence.

The docu-series claims the show’s sensational tone can be traced back to its Executive Producer Richard Dominick, who worked on tabloids such as Weekly world news and that Sun before he became The Jerry Springer Show showrunner from 1994 to 2008. During Dominick’s tenure, ratings went through the roof. Guests included a man who cut off his own penis and a man who left his wife and two daughters and married a horse.

Dominick appears in the series and has not regretted his approach. As he explains, “Life is hard,” and weird news “takes you out of your world.”

Annette Grundy, one of the producers under Dominick, says that the goal was to put together a program that would catch people’s eyes even with the sound off.

Why there were so many fights The Jerry Springer Show

When the show first started, it was pretty tame. Springer would interview guests as a teenager excited about going to college. Then Dominick was hired, and he knew the softball interviews weren’t going to get the kind of high ratings the networks wanted.

Producers say they were given marching orders to ensure guests got into fights after an explosive 1997 episode called “Klanfrontation,” in which members of the Ku Klux Klan got into a fight with Irv Rubin, the founder of the Jewish Defense League. The KKK members had just been initiated into the Klan, and the point of the episode was to see if they could abandon their allegiance to the Klan before they got in too deep.

After this episode, the show producers focused on creating more explosive arguments through the guests.

Show guests were initially treated like royalty, driven to the studio in a limousine. When they got to the studio, the producers would coach them on what to say on air and try to build them up. IN Jerry Springer, one guest recalls receiving drink tickets and being encouraged to get drunk.

IN Jerry Springer, there is footage of producers doing fake interviews with guests where they literally scream at them. One named Toby Yoshimura recalls, “I would open the dressing room door, pick up a chair, throw it across the green room and start screaming.” Footage of his mock interview with a guest shows him calling her a “meth-head piece of ass.” As he explains what he was trying to do, “You start as *** fight. You tore them up to tornado level and then you send them out on stage.”

Regarding Springer’s approach to the show, he once described the difference between himself and popular TV host Oprah Winfrey by saying, “she’s doing a real talk show. I’m not doing a talk show. I’m doing a circus. There’s just no lions. ”

Springer saw the show as a place to “demonstrate outrageousness,” he says in archive footage included in the docu-series. He always maintained that all opinions deserve to be heard, no matter how outlandish.

“In a free society, the media should reflect all elements of that society, not just the mainstream. On our show, for example, we have Klansmen on, we have neo-Nazis on — they killed my family,” says Springer, the son of Holocaust survivors, in another interview shown in the series. “I hate these people. I hate what they stand for. I may hate what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”