Woman reacts to aired show

Judd Morse Staff Writer

Ada May 16, 2008 03:38 pm

— While the episode wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, Michelle Childress said the recent episode of “The Dr. Phil Show” in which she’d been featured was a total farce and her phobia was taken out of context.
“There were a lot of questions that Dr. Phil asked me that weren’t aired, but they would air my reactions to them to make me look worse,” said Childress. “They nipped and tucked a lot of the showing so I would look worse than what I was. It was totally a farce and totally out of context to what I was supposed to be on there for. They just used me as a tool for ratings.”
Whenever Childress sees an obese person eating gluttonously, the sight causes her to become violently ill.
She said that it’s not an indication of any dislike towards overweight people, it’s just a triggered response, something her mother suffered from as well.
Childress claimed the staff from Phil McGraw's hit talk show misled her by inviting her to take part in a show that would help to deal with unique phobias. Instead, the Ada resident and mother of five found herself on a show entitled “I’m Hot, You’re Not!” Childress was portrayed as a former beauty queen that hated being around fat people.
McGraw’s camera crew filmed Childress at home and at the Golden Corral. While in the restaurant, the camera crew hoped to capture footage of Childress becoming physically ill from watching overweight people eat ravenously. When none could be found, they goaded Childress into pretending to become ill and filmed that instead.
After the episode was taped in February of this year, Childress attempted to contact the show’s producers to voice her complaints about being misled and taken advantage of.
“Emily, I have hurt a lot of people by being on that show. I was deceived into thinking it was about certain phobias people had,” Childress wrote in an e-mail to the show’s associate producer Emily Bailey.
“I thought the Dr. Phil show was just about the only talk show that was on the up, except for Oprah. You knew the whole time that the title was called “I’m Hot and You’re Not!” If I would have known that, I would have never tried to seek help for my problem under those circumstances and in that sick way! It is integrity here that was missing. I guess that’s just Hollywood, but Dr. Phil will have to answer to God Almighty for being deceptive. He saw my tape and I was just a tool to use.”
Bailey responded to the e-mail the same day. “I apologize sincerely. I want you to know that I personally feel horrible about you leaving the show so dissatisfied. It was never my intention for things to turn out this way,” Bailey wrote. “I understand why you feel you were miscategorized and I feel absolutely awful about that. The truth is we never know what Dr. Phil is going to say to our guests.
“He did acknowledge your problem as a phobia and as being something he felt you would honestly change if you could. I also spoke with many people on our staff and we all agree that you did not appear to be a mean or hurtful person. I think you defended and explained your stance well, and there were multiple times throughout the show where you were differentiated from our first guest because of that point.
“I think that once you see the show you may feel better about the way things turned out. Dr. Phil always wants people to have a chance to fully explain where they are coming from and I believe you were given that chance and stood by it. Nobody was trying to make you say things you didn’t believe or appear to be someone you were not. That being said, I apologize again that this was not a positive experience for you. I will make this fully aware to my superiors in hopes to avoid this situation in the future.”

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