Dr. Phil has become synonymous with the modern-day crowd and the millennials have mostly grown up listening to the name being used as an adjective or a verb to describe anything relating to sound advice. The origin of the name, however, dates back to the 90s when Dr. Phillip McGraw had begun appearing as the resident expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show, before landing his own television career with the Dr. Phil chat show.
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Dr. Phil (2002-Present): An Abridged History
Phillip C. McGraw, popularly known as Dr. Phil, is an American television personality born on September 1, 1950, in Oklahoma, US. The internet describes his platform as one that provides the most comprehensive forum on mental health issues in the history of television. Dr. McGraw holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and uses his decades of experience in the sociological and psychological fields to address issues that plague the current times.
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While working in Courtroom Sciences Inc. (CSI) which he had co-founded with lawyer Gary Dobbs in 1990, McGraw came across Oprah Winfrey and began working with the celebrated talk show host. Although he was only availed by Ms. Winfrey for his company’s legal services in fighting the Amarillo Texas beef trial (1995-98), she was so impressed with the man that she hired him to work on her show. 4 years later, in September 1992, Oprah Winfrey helped launch McGraw’s own syndicated television show, Dr. Phil.
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Dr. Phil Fires Employees After Claims of Racism & Abuse
The chat show has currently completed 20 seasons of successful television presence. However, the frontman hasn’t been devoid of some blots on his personality after all these years in the limelight. Phillip McGraw had been accused by over a dozen employees, current and former, of allegedly treating them under conditions representing “verbal abuse, fear, intimidation, and racism” and making them “perpetuate racial stereotypes on-screen”. The workplace treatment reports have been claimed as nothing but “clickbait” by Phillip McGraw’s lawyer, H. Patrick Morris.
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The spokesperson for the show claimed, “Going into Season 21, we streamlined production to ensure longevity. As is typical of this process, there were some roles we discovered that we could reduce yet still deliver our dynamic, forward-thinking program.” However, the firing of 25 employees comes at a time the drastic action could be considered a manner of shutting down public chatter without the threat of getting canceled.
Dr. Phil Season 21 premieres on September 12, 2022.
Source: Buzzfeed News
