Maury Povich Recalls the Paternity Test Result from His Daytime Show That Shocked Him Most
- - Maury Povich Recalls the Paternity Test Result from His Daytime Show That Shocked Him Most
Victoria EdelJanuary 13, 2026 at 6:27 AM
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Maury Show/YouTube
Maury Povich opening paternity test results on 'Maury' -
Maury Povich reflected on his famed paternity tests from his daytime talk show
The former host said that he stopped trying to guess who was and wasn't the father after this one shocking result
He also revealed that he never knew the test results until he opened the envelope on air
Even Maury Povich often shared the audience's surprise when revealing paternity results.
Povich, 86, appeared on the Monday, Jan. 12, episode of The View to talk about his appearance in the ABC News series Dirty Talk: When Daytime Talk Shows Ruled TV. Povich hosted his eponymous talk show from 1991 to 2022.
The View cohosts asked Povich about looking back at his career for the docuseries. “First of all, you have to understand that, I'd say in the beginning of the late 80s through the 2000s, there were 20 of us on air every day, and another 50 shows were in the graveyard that didn't work,” he said. “And so it was so competitive. And we were all pushing the envelope.” If a competitor beat them in ratings, they had to find “something racier” than they had to top it.
The View host Sonny Hostin said, “No one was better than you at, ‘You are not the father. Yes, you are the father.’ No one can beat that segment.” She mimicked Povich’s iconic intonation of the line, which was the climax of many paternity segments on the show.
Maury Show/YouTube
Maury Povich on 'Maury'
Povich explained, “Well, the reason why it was that kind of inflection was I didn't know the result. I didn't want to know anything more than the guest or the audience because I would skew the questions.” He didn’t want to give away any info before the reveal and he wanted to have his real emotional reactions to the news in the moment.
Host Ana Navarro asked Povich how often he looked at the baby and correctly guessed it the person would be the father or not.
“I gave up trying to figure it out when I saw this woman come on,” he shared. He remembered, “And she was white and the guy she was accusing of being the father was Black. And that baby picture came on, and that was a dead white baby.” Host Whoopi Goldberg jokingly clarified, “The baby wasn't dead.
“It was as white as it could be,” he said. “And of course, the Black guy ends up being the father!” Though Povich stopped making guesses, it didn’t stop the audience in the studio or at home from trying to guess when they watched the episodes.
The View host Sarah Haines asked Povich if he had a theory about why people agreed to air their personal lives on his show.
Heidi Gutman/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
Maury Povich in 2013
“I think more than anything else, at least on my show, I think I provided a safe space,” he said. Even though their lives were “completely different” from his, they still felt a kindred feeling.
“You're a talk show host. You have to knock on people's doors. You have to be invited in. You have to be a member of their family in order to be accepted and to be able to make a connection,” he said. If a host couldn’t make that connection, their show was canceled. But the ones that did form the bond were the ones that lasted. He also theorized that ‘90s talk shows were the “precursors” to reality television.
In 2023, Povich received the Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of his 37-year career on television
Back in 2017, he opened up to PEOPLE about the guest stories his show told — and if they were real. “Of course,” he said. “This is not Springer. Jerry and I have known each other a long time and I love his honesty: He says his show is wrestling. My show is not wrestling.”
“My show is for real, and these people, we check them out,” he said. “I operate like a newsroom. We have seven production teams and they look at these stories, they check them out back in their hometowns, they talk to their friends, they talk to their family members. This is real stuff.”
He said that he thought guests liked to “unburden” themselves on the show. “They think that maybe after the show, if there’s a lot of the baggage before the show, maybe if it can all come out, they can start again,” he said.
Dirty Talk: When Daytime Talk Shows Ruled TV premieres Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 9 p.m. on ABC and streams the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
