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Jerry! Jerry!
A producer on “The Jerry Springer Show” has come forward in a new interview with bombshell claims that he was essentially a “pimp” for the notorious talk show’s host.
Norm Lubow went from a multi-time guest, to freelance guest booker, to star producer on Jerry Springer’s long-running lowbrow show — where the dregs of society would be called to fight, curse, spit, and strip for the afternoon entertainment of the American public from 1991 to 2018.
Lubow claimed in an interview published Tuesday with the Irish Sun that he and co-producer and buddy Al Bowman would hire “fake” guests who were likely to sleep with an eager Springer after the show.
“When we were first hired Jerry came out to meet us in LA and picked us up in a limo,” the one-time producer said of his 1996 hiring as a guest-finder.
“The first thing Jerry said to us was, ‘I want to get laid, where are the hookers?,’” Lubow recalled of the one-time mayor of Cincinnati.
“We were like, ‘Whoa!’ but basically we realized right away, it wasn’t just about getting guests for the show, it was about getting him laid, which of course we did,” Lubow claimed to the outlet.
“That just became part of our job and that’s why we were so successful and we moved up the ladder. We found him women who were happy to do double duty, come on the show and look after Jerry after filming,” said Lubow.
“I realized right away that the most important thing was not finding guests, but finding women for Jerry,” he added.
“I’d go up to them and say, ‘Uh, you know I’m a new producer here and it would do me a huge favor if you would go out with Jerry tonight, he thinks you’re great,’ and they would. So I was like the pimp,” the producer alleged.
Lubow dished to the outlet that many of the guests he would book were “fake” and Jerry was aware of their shady origins — something producers made peace with because regular people would often clam-up on TV.
“I called it ‘real people syndrome.’ Some people would have the most shocking lives and talk all about it off-camera, but as soon as the camera was rolling they’d be silent because they’d get embarrassed,” Lubow said.
“At least with fake guests you knew they would deliver what they were told to. And it was easier because you didn’t have to deal with the aftermath,” Lubow concluded.
One set of “real guests” that Lubow booked “threatened to kill each other after the show” further incentivizing the producer to stack the deck with “fake” guests — who were people ready to behave outrageously on the tube.
Lubow was fired as a producer in 1998 after an exposé from “20/20” revealed that he was coaching guests on the show and even giving some scripts, according to the Irish Sun.
“As I put it, they wanted to eat steak but they didn’t want to know how you butchered the cow,” Ludow said snidely, adding, “But [showrunners] knew a lot of these people weren’t legit – and they preferred the fake shows as they were more fun and less trouble.”
to stream on Netflix. Courtesy of Netflix
Many of those “fake” guests that Lubow found were attractive women that were “happy to do double duty” as both a guest and post-show date for Jerry, he claimed.
“Luckily, I knew a lot of good-looking women — strippers and things — from my days in a band in LA so that meant I quickly went from a freelance guest-finder to a full-time producer on the show.”
Lubow believes that Springer — who died in 2023 and is the subject of a new Netflix documentary “Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action” — was overwhelmed by his quick rise to fame.
“He couldn’t control his urges because he was finally getting attention and getting women that he never got before — he was like a kid in a candy store,” Lubow said.
The guest-turned-producer took issue with the way his former boss is portrayed in “Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action”, calling the documentary a “whitewash.”
“It was just an accepted part of my job being his pimp and on the Netflix show they make out that he had this one sex scandal. No way, that was just the only time he got caught.”
Lubow was previously a guest on “The Jerry Springer Show” to discuss his marijuana-based faux-religion based in Southern California called the Religion of The Holy Herb.
He also appeared on the show under an alter-ego “Reverend Bud Green,” alongside Al Bowman, to launch a fake presidential campaign on the show in 1996 and advocate for the legalization of marijuana.
English (US)