- 14 hours ago
Some daytime TV moments make you cringe so hard you might never recover! Join us as we look at the most unsettling sitdowns that shocked viewers and changed television forever. From Ellen's pregnancy ambush of Mariah Carey to the tragic aftermath of The Jeremy Kyle Show, these interviews crossed lines that should never have been crossed. What interview left you speechless?
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00:00Did you kill your mother?
00:04Yeah.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at some of the most unsettling sit-downs ever seen on daytime talk
00:10shows.
00:11I smile because I have medication at night time.
00:13Do you?
00:13Which I took about half past 11 last night, didn't I, Mark?
00:17Mariah Carey, The Ellen DeGeneres Show
00:19After the queen of daytime TV was called out in 2020, viewers began scrutinizing moments on The Ellen DeGeneres Show
00:25that now seem toxic.
00:26A 2008 chat with Mariah Carey was particularly cruel even at the time.
00:41DeGeneres addressed rumors that the Songbird Supreme was expecting her first child with Nick Cannon.
00:45She proceeded to interrogate Carey with champagne until she confirmed her pregnancy.
00:49The guest's visible discomfort suggested that she hadn't planned on making the announcement like this.
00:56No, no, no. My mother would be at home, like, on the computer, like, what are you talking about?
01:01No, we won't let you know when we're going to have a family.
01:03No, you won't.
01:04Yes, I would.
01:05No.
01:06They always say that when they're sitting on the show, and then I read about it the next day.
01:09Years later, Carey revealed that she was not in on DeGeneres' playful bit, and that a previous miscarriage made the
01:14pressure worse.
01:15It wouldn't take 12 years for this intrusion to get even more painful.
01:18Shortly after her reluctant announcement, Carey suffered another miscarriage.
01:22Corey Feldman, The Today Show.
01:24Corey Feldman is on a mission, as he describes it, to clean up Hollywood.
01:28Actor, musician, and sexual abuse survivor Corey Feldman has justifiably made many viewers uncomfortable by speaking his truth.
01:34The most uncomfortable incident had to be when he appeared on The Today Show to promote plans to make a
01:39feature film exposing predators who were still active in the industry.
01:42I believe there's a lot of darkness in Hollywood right now, and I believe it's been there for quite some
01:47time.
01:47Matt Lauer grilled Feldman for the Truth Campaign's goal of a $10 million crowdfunded budget, which Feldman asserted was needed
01:53for distribution and legal protection.
01:55So, every day you wait, every day you try to raise money, I would imagine you believe that children are
02:02being abused.
02:03His film project ultimately fell through, but he became a prominent figure in the ensuing hashtag MeToo movement.
02:08Lauer himself later saw his career destroyed by allegations of serial abuse.
02:13Even without that context, though, his harsh skepticism about Feldman's claim was at best in bad taste.
02:18Promised in the past to name names.
02:21Never.
02:21In your book, you said, when you were talking about your books, you said you were going to blow the
02:24lid off of this.
02:25And this is why I'm doing this, because when I wrote my book, the publishers prevented me from writing the
02:30names down.
02:31Fred Phelps, Ricky Lake.
02:32They're living their lives. How is it harming your life?
02:35Somebody's got to tell them they're not going to heaven if they keep living that filthy lifestyle.
02:39What could have been quintessential trash TV wound up being a watershed moment in American media.
02:44The first season of Ricky Lake featured Minister Fred Phelps and Charles Hockenbarger of the Westboro Baptist Church,
02:50who condemned social acceptance of being gay as a sign of the apocalypse.
02:54This statement was made more disturbing by the height of the AIDS crisis.
02:58And I'm a person living with AIDS, and so, you know, someday that might be my service.
03:13But when Lake turned to the audience, gay people and allies denounced Phelps as a bigot,
03:18who understands neither their community or Christian doctrine.
03:21As the guests became belligerent, they eventually left altogether, only to return a bit later.
03:26This interview is as difficult as ever to watch, but marks a moment when a struggling community triumphantly stood up
03:31for themselves.
03:32If he's criminal, you were disbarred, and you just proved that you're turning people...
03:37Don't you interrupt me, you ignorant...
03:40You shut up!
03:42Carrie Katona, This Morning.
03:44Yesterday she showed off her brand new body in the tabloids.
03:47Today, Carrie joins us for an exclusive interview.
03:50The burden of fame on this former Atomic Kitten singer was distilled in her notorious 2008 interview for This Morning.
03:56She was promoting the controversial reality show Carrie Katona Hulligan,
04:00which documented her undergoing extensive plastic surgery at age 28.
04:04And you, you know, really have bared all there.
04:07Yeah, I mean, that, look at that is, it makes me feel like, wow, this, the, the, the, the, so
04:14how I am now, it was such a relief.
04:16I mean, they were so big.
04:17I mean, you could see by how long they were.
04:21So now it's just unbelievable.
04:23And not once have I complained about my back.
04:25Not once.
04:26She not only failed to justify this to Fern Britton and Philip Schofield, but could barely form coherent sentences.
04:31Her apparent intoxication and admission to continuing to smoke, despite post-op risks,
04:36affirmed to fans that she had a problem.
04:38I smile because I have medication at night time.
04:41Do you?
04:41Which I took about half past 11 last night, didn't I, Mark?
04:44I don't know, TV show last night.
04:45I wasn't talking like this yesterday, but probably because it's early in the morning, but that's...
04:49So what, your speech is slurred early in the morning?
04:52Katona achieved sobriety the following year,
04:54and has since made promoting mental health and celebrity pressure key to her public image.
04:58Her heartbreaking exploitation on this morning was certainly its own cautionary tale.
05:02We wish you well.
05:03I hope it's a big success for you.
05:05And you're looking fantastic.
05:07I know, I feel it.
05:08And you feel great?
05:09Good.
05:09Teen Hatemongers, Geraldo.
05:11In the early days of his show,
05:13Geraldo Rivera spoke with three members of the white Aryan resistance youth to expose the corruption of their ideology.
05:19Our guests that you'll meet today are truly hate-filled.
05:22The interview had already been postponed by a gang brawl outside of the studio several weeks earlier.
05:27Sure enough, the group's rhetoric and confrontations with the audience were very chilling.
05:32Tensions escalated when Roy Innes, chairman of Congress of Racial Equality,
05:36arrived to provide a credible counter-argument.
05:38This ultimately led to a violent standoff and the group being escorted out.
05:46Though he sustained visible injuries in the scuffle,
05:48Rivera finished the show with his point proven the hard way.
05:51This infamous incident further discredited white supremacy,
05:54while contributing to the rise of sensationalist interviews on daytime TV.
05:58Only slightly the worst for the wear.
06:01We're back.
06:03R. Kelly, CBS This Morning.
06:05How stupid would it be for me to, with my crazy past and what I've been through,
06:12oh, right now I just think I need to be a monster and hold girls against their will.
06:17Allegations of extensive abuse against R. Kelly reached all the way to court.
06:20The 2019 Lifetime docu-series consolidated these twisted rumors,
06:24but the R&B star's response on CBS This Morning sealed his downfall.
06:2930 years of my career!
06:31Y'all trying to kill me!
06:34You're killing me, man!
06:36This ain't not about music!
06:39I'm trying to have a relationship with my kids!
06:41A pre-taped conversation with Gil King showed Kelly as a smooth talker with some eccentric flourishes,
06:47but his defense when confronted about surviving R. Kelly was less than convincing,
06:50and his outbursts about feeling victimized by the public were truly terrifying.
06:54Shortly thereafter, Kelly was charged with racketeering and multiple sex crimes,
06:59then convicted in 2021.
07:01At the very least, King's interview finished off any sympathy anyone had for this clearly dangerous charismatic.
07:06You don't want to believe it!
07:08Scott Amager and Jonathan Schmitz, The Jenny Jones Show.
07:11One of those revelations would turn deadly.
07:15Man might just, uh, have to get this guy, man.
07:17The most infamous episode of The Jenny Jones Show didn't go to air.
07:21In 1995, Jonathan Schmitz was part of a group of ordinary people
07:24whose secret admirers would confess their crushes on national television.
07:28His was male co-worker, Scott Amager, who was disappointed to learn that Schmitz was straight.
07:33Both men tried to stay polite during the interview,
07:35but the heartbreak and discomfort were overwhelming even in real time.
07:38Okay, you think about it, you have fantasies about him?
07:40I've had a couple, yeah.
07:42Never mind three weeks later, when Schmitz got into a drunken argument with Amager that ended in murder.
07:46He said, I went on The Jenny Jones Show, I didn't know it was a guy, that's why I killed
07:52him.
07:52Schmitz's conviction was a landmark moment in discrediting gay panic as a criminal defense.
07:57It was also a cautionary case in trash TV that exploited someone's sexuality
08:01and humiliated two people to a tragic end.
08:04The Jenny Jones Show ran until 2003 for well over a thousand episodes,
08:10but its most famous episode was one that never made it to air.
08:14Steve Diamond, The Jeremy Kyle Show.
08:17Polygraph tests were a hallmark of the UK's premier tabloid talk show.
08:21Among the guests tested was Steve Diamond, who struggled with his mental health
08:25and insisted that he never cheated on his partner, Jane Callaghan.
08:28After the polygraph contradicted this claim, he and Callaghan suffered a horrific meltdown on camera.
08:33I have not been unfaithful to her.
08:35Why'd you fail the test then?
08:36I don't know.
08:37I have not been unfaithful to her.
08:40There you are, Jane.
08:40I mean, I am...
08:41Jeremy Kyle intervened by harassing his guest as a serial liar.
08:45One week later, Diamond took his own life.
08:48Today, ITV issued a statement saying,
08:50Everyone at ITV and The Jeremy Kyle Show is shocked and saddened
08:54at the news of the death of a participant in the show.
08:57The scandal prevented his episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show from airing
09:00and soon ended the show overall after 14 years.
09:03It's even been attributed to a decline in British tabloid TV,
09:06with footage of Diamond's interview being preserved as a gruesome warning.
09:09Listen, I've been cancelled.
09:11Yeah.
09:11In this world, it seems now that unless you follow a certain path, you're labelled.
09:16Yes.
09:16Zachary Davis, Dr. Phil.
09:18The guards there really didn't want to be in the same room with him.
09:25Dr. Phil McGraw psychoanalyzed a lot of troubled people on the show,
09:29but he himself was particularly unsettled by Zachary Davis,
09:32who in 2015 was on trial for his mother's murder.
09:36Did you kill your mother?
09:40Yeah.
09:41The dead-eyed, deep-voiced teenager admitted to bludgeoning the victim in her sleep in vivid detail.
09:46Did she make a noise?
09:48I couldn't just hear the hammer.
09:51When McGraw later shared an abridgment of the interview,
09:53he, his guests, and the studio audience were visibly horrified.
09:57The court agreed with his assessment that Davis posed a threat to society,
10:00as he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years.
10:03He became a popular case of ignoring serious mental illness until a gruesome turn.
10:08Did you laugh when you were hitting her?
10:17That Dr. Phil popularized this horror,
10:19also raised debates over when sharing the signs is just exploitation.
10:23Before we continue,
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10:39Clanfrontation,
10:40The Jerry Springer Show
10:41Over 20 years of salacious sit-downs
10:44made The Jerry Springer Show synonymous with trash TV.
10:47Still,
10:47it's hard to top the 1997 episode
10:49that punctuated its fall from serious politics.
10:56Springer seemed to return to that when he brokered a dialogue
10:59between members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Jewish Defense League.
11:03It was consistently clear
11:04that trying to bridge two extremist groups' separation on race was a bad idea.
11:08Almost inevitably,
11:10the guests came to blows.
11:11While this sort of incident wasn't unheard of,
11:13deliberately engineering tension that extreme
11:15marked a turning point in how American daytime TV represents politics,
11:19never mind how tabloid talk shows tackle difficult conversations.
11:22Just when it seemed clanfrontation couldn't get any more disturbing.
11:25If there's a lesson in all of this today,
11:27it's that we may all be offended by how they look,
11:31but what is really scary and dangerous are their ideas.
11:35What are some other talk show moments that pretty much ruined your day?
11:38Let's have a chat in the comments.
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