Jerry SpringerProducers Defend Using Underhanded 'Tactics' to Control Guests: 'They Should Feel Beholden to You'

Mar. 15, 2025

Jerry Springer on ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ in 1998.Photo:Ralf-Finn Hestoft/CORBIS/Corbis/Getty

Ralf-Finn Hestoft/CORBIS/Corbis/Getty

The Jerry Springer Showtook liberties with its backstage treatment of guests that were nearly as extreme as what sometimes happened on air.

In the new two-part Netflix documentaryJerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, the son of one guest reveals that producers from the show threatened to withhold his mother’s plane ticket home if she didn’t perform on the show as they instructed her to.

“Backstage, she was informed that if she didn’t return to the end of the show, they wouldn’t provide her her ticket back to Florida,” Jeffrey says in the documentary.

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Richard Dominick watches the action on ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ from the control room.Courtesy of Netflix

Courtesy of Netflix

“It was a tactic so that you as a producer had one more chance to keep them,” Yoshimura says of the withholding of complimentary travel. “They should feel beholden to you, that they’re gonna let you — they’re letting you down and you’ve done all of this for them.”

Jeffrey says his mother “wasn’t having that.”

“As strong as she was, I’m sure she felt confused and didn’t understand what happened. After the show, no one fromTheJerry Springer Showcontacted to check on her, to see where she was, where she went. As far as I know, it never happened.”

Jeffrey, son of The Jerry Springer Show guest Nancy Campbell-Panitz.Courtesy of Netflix

Executive producer Richard Dominick says that helping guests in a serious capacity was beyond their capabilities at the time.

“We weren’t problem solvers. We’re going to give you a chance to come on, tell your story, get it all out, but we were not going to help you,” he says.

Learn more about the Panitz love triangle and other memorable guests on the infamous talk show onJerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, now streaming on Netflix.

source: people.com