‘Jerry Springer Show' producer quit after this moment 'hit me like a sledgehammer'
As one of the most controversial television shows in pop culture history, those who worked on "The Jerry Springer Show" were bound to run into some moral and ethical dilemmas behind the scenes.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Toby Yoshimura – who stars in the newly released two-part Netflix documentary "Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action" – opened up about his harrowing experience as a producer, explaining why he turned to alcohol and drugs as a coping mechanism and detailing the terrifying moment that ultimately made him walk away from the show.
"I've worked on this a lot in the last decade, multiple decades," Yoshimura, who worked on the show for the first season in 1991, then again from 2006 to 2008, said of giving himself grace after leaving the show. "I didn't think about any of it. I was trying to survive. I was trying to – we were just working week to week to get a show up."
It wasn't until one particular incident that Yoshimura questioned, "What am I doing?"
"I wasn't doing well. Emotionally, the pressures of that show were kicking my ass," he said in the documentary. "Stuff starts to grate at you about things that you ask people to do in the name of entertainment."
"I remember one night a woman called the show because she wanted to tell her dad to stop ordering her at the website that she was a hooker on because they'd send her and she'd have to do the job. This had been going on since she was 16," he continued.
"We had them under aliases in different hotels, and they didn't know where each other were," he added. "I went over to her hotel first just to see how she was doing. I knocked on the door and her dad opened in a towel. She came to the door. You could tell that she was embarrassed. They'd just got done having sex. It was like putting two barrels of a shotgun to my head [and] pulling the f---ing trigger."
Yoshimura told Fox News Digital that was the final straw.
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WATCH: 'JERRY SPRINGER SHOW' PRODUCER QUIT AFTER THIS MOMENT ‘HIT ME LIKE A SLEDGEHAMMER’
"It hit me like a sledgehammer, and I walked away from the show," he said.
"I don't know if it morally became a problem just globally, but I know I was struggling to sort of justify myself and my existence. All of a sudden it dawned on me: ‘What am I doing?’ And it didn't go well. The first time I left the show, I sat in my apartment in Los Angeles for four days and cried. Not very healthy. It was bad."
Before quitting, Yoshimura said he turned to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism.
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"I had to do a lot of recovery for myself," he told Fox News Digital. "I think that I can't lay my demons at the door of ‘The Jerry Springer Show.’ I had a lot of other stuff going on, but it certainly didn't help. I think that my pattern was very simple. If I produced my show on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I was sh--faced, and then I'm spinning it back up, getting ready for the show and then back at it again."
"It's almost like I didn't want to spend a lot of time thinking about stuff when I wasn't actually neck deep in my job," he continued. "I think the drugs part of it were just, I mean, listen, it's a gateway. Once things stop working, you just try something else."
He returned to the show in 2006 before quitting for good in 2008.
"The Jerry Springer Show" launched on Sept. 30, 1991, and ran for 27 seasons. The last episode aired on July 26, 2018.
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"I want to take this opportunity to apologize for everything I've ever done," Springer, who died in 2023 after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer, said in a resurfaced clip in the documentary. "I have ruined the culture."
Initially, the program started off as a daytime talk show. However, given the poor ratings, producers were quick to flip the script.
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"All I had to do was convince him, 'Let’s make it wild,'" Richard Dominick, a former executive producer, said in the documentary.
Dubbed as the "King of Trash TV," Springer was determined to "demonstrate outrageousness," he said.
But behind the massive success was a wave of dark secrets and controversies.
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"The producers were coaching us on what to say and how to act," a former guest on the show said at one point. "They weren't interested in what kind of impact it was going to have on you."
Controversial subject lines included incest, bestiality, adultery and more while encouraging physical altercations, chair-throwing, nudity and plenty of explicit behavior.
"So listen, I think, was it a boiler room? A hundred percent," Yoshimura told Fox News Digital.
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"I can say that the guests were – I don't think they came on the show to solve their problems. I think they came on the show to confront their problems, and there's a difference. I think that you know what you're getting when you come to ‘The Jerry Springer Show,’ right?"
Despite the chaos, Yoshimura said he "wouldn't trade those years for anything."
"It was a job I had 25 years ago, and I've moved on, and I have a wife and a stepdaughter, and they're awesome," he said. "And the biggest controversy in my life today is Elf on a Shelf and what that damn elf s--t's gotten into every morning, and it's always something. So that's the chaos that I have today."
As for his relationship with Springer, Yoshimura had only positive things to say about the late host.
"He was very much the sanity of that job," he said.
"What I think, very rarely, very few people experienced the generosity of Jerry, how much of a wonderful father he was, and just [a] huge heart to everybody that came in contact with him," he added. "That's something that I'll never forget is Jerry defending us was like we were bulletproof. And then seeing him go to the ends of the earth for his daughter and his family was like nothing else in this world."
Springer's publicist, Linda Shafran, confirmed his death to Fox News Digital in April 2023. The TV personality died from pancreatic cancer, according to Springer's spiritual leader and friend, Rabbi Sandford Kopnick.
"Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried, whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word," Jene Galvin, a family spokesperson and friend of Springer's since 1970, said in a statement. "He’s irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely, but memories of his intellect, heart and humor will live on."
"Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action," is now available to stream on Netflix.