Was 'The Jerry Springer Show' Staged? Seven Years After Show's End, Questions Remain

During the '90s, few shows ruled the air quite like The Jerry Springer Show. Airing during the day, the iconic show featured host Jerry Springer playing referee for increasingly outrageous guests throughout the years. While the show had humble beginnings, it eventually became a sensation and cultural icon.

Throughout the decades, the show has inspired much speculation about just how much of the show was staged and how much of it was organic. So was The Jerry Springer Show staged? Here's what we know about the iconic show-down show and how much of it was real versus coached.

The guests seemed too sensational to be real. Some days, heartbroken family members confronted others for breaking their trust or sleeping with their spouses. Other days, the stage erupted into an all-out brawl as frenemies came to blows over rumors of infidelity and drug-running. Love triangles were a staple, and the depths of human interpersonal conflict were plumbed.

So how much of it was real? More than you'd imagine.

Much of the reality comes from how the guests were selected. According to Quora user Rachel Leduc, people offered their stories to producers who decided if the guest's stories were interesting enough and fit the bill of a dramatic reveal. Of course, producers didn't seem to do any fact-checking.

Another Quora user confirms that the fights were real. People did in fact lay hands on each other. But like much of the content, it was egged on and exaggerated by producers.

It seems reasonable to guess that the show is at least 50 percent scripted and 50 percent real. The contestants are real, and their stories are ostensibly grounded in reality. But they are exaggerated and pushed to extremes by producers looking to trigger the biggest reactions and hone in on the most fantastic details.

In one Reddit thread, former contestants have weighed in on their experiences. One Reddit user disputed the idea that any part of the show was real, writing, "My husband worked with a guy who was on the show. 100 percent fake and they (he, his wif,e and a friend) were responsible for making up their own backstory/feud."

However, another Reddit user disagreed and shared their own personal experience, claiming that there was more reality than you'd think; "I was on it. It was mostly fake. We had a smidgen of truth to our story and they filled in the rest. They recorded us before the show started saying that it was all real, and if we told people it wasn't they'd fine us something like $86,000, which they said was the cost of taping one episode."

One user wondered why there might be such a range in experiences, writing that the earlier Jerry Springer shows seemed less scripted. Perhaps the earlier you appeared on the show in its 27-year run, the less likely you were to experience a highly staged episode.

While that's just speculation, it makes sense. The longer the show was on the air, the wilder the stories became.

Fights were once a rarity but soon became a staple.

So how much was the show staged? It varies from episode to episode, but it seems as though the truth was at least twisted if not outright fabricated.