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'The Jerry Springer Show' ex-producer reveals the disturbing BTS moment that made him quit

Toby Yoshimura opens up about the deep emotional trauma he faced, revealing how the pressures led him to turn to drugs and alcohol

In a new Netflix documentary series, ‘Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action’, a former producer of the show, Toby Yoshimura, opens up about the emotional toll the job took on him. Toby, who worked as the producer of 'The Jerry Springer Show” shares how the chaotic, often shocking content of the episodes led him to turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with the pressure. Toby worked as a guest coordinator for the show and was responsible for inviting guests, mostly people associated with strange or controversial situations, but one incident truly hit him and made him reconsider everything.

Toby recalls the most disturbing case, where a woman shared a heartbreaking story of her father trying to push her into prostitution when she was just 16 years old. When he went to check on the guests at their hotels, he saw the father and daughter in a highly inappropriate and awkward situation, which horrified him. This became the breaking point for Toby, who described it as the equivalent of putting two barrels of a shotgun to his head and pulling the trigger. This incident was made for the reality TV format, but Toby found it affecting his mental state; he confessed how such a program became an emotional pain for him, and how much remorse he has that he ever went on to produce such shows.

“I wasn’t doing well. Emotionally, the pressures of that show were kicking my a--,” Toby said in the Netflix documentary, “Stuff starts to grate at you about things that you ask people to do in the name of entertainment.” Toby continued, recalling one night when a woman called the show to confront her father for ordering her on a website where she was listed as a prostitute, adding since she was 16. But things got grimmer when it brought them into Chicago — where the soap opera was taping.

Narrating the traumatic incident, he said, “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 added, “We had them under aliases in different hotels, and they didn't know where each other were.”

Further giving more info on the controversial episode, Toby added more chilling details. “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,” he shared, “She came to the door. You could tell that she was embarrassed. They’d just got done having sex.” This was enough for Toby to quit the show.

‘Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action’ is a Netflix documentary released in 2025 to give viewers access behind the lens of the famous, yet sensational and scandal-ridden American talk show ‘The Jerry Springer Show’. The two-part series uncovers the biggest on-and-off-screen scandals. How producers and crew managed to engineer ever more astounding and sensationalistic storylines. The documentary examines the real-life impact of these outrageous moments, showing how the show pushed the envelope to keep people watching.