On Tuesday October 8, I got to be in the audience for the Dr. Phil show while they filmed two episodes. We found out that Dr. Phil was filming his show in fort worth because my sister Etta Maddox saw an ad on Instagram. She looked at the Dr. Phil website to see if it was official and it was. She applied to get tickets and we got them for free! I got to go with Riley Romero, Etta Maddox, and my mom. I got dressed in my black business casual outfit. I wore a black blouse with a long bow tie, a black pencil skirt, black heels, and a black coat. We were supposed to ‘Dress to Impress.”
My day there started early in the morning. My mom drove me there after we dropped my little sister off at school at 8:10am. She really wanted to come but you had to be 16 years old to enter. The place where the show was filmed was about 30 minutes away from Paschal. We were running early so I went home to get my school work so I could work on as much as I could.
The doors opened at 10:00 and we got there at 9:15. About 10 minutes later after we parked and were getting ready to be on TV, I saw a helicopter. I thought it could be Dr. Phil, but my mom thought it was a Walmart executive. I doubted that. To my mom’s surprise Dr. Phil came out of the helicopter. I saw about three other people taking pictures with him so I quickly put my heels on and walked (as fast as I could in heels) to take a picture with him. He told me I looked nice and put his arm around my shoulder when we took the selfie. I thanked him and he was really nice.
When the doors opened we waited in line to get our tickets. There were different colored tickets which meant you came into the audience in the order of certain colors. We got yellow which was VIP! The people at Dr. Phil chose who they wanted to give VIP, I think it the people who were dressed nicely and had a good personality. There was a gift shop when we walked in, I wanted to get a mug. We then had to sign these papers. I waited in the security line when my mom signed them. Then we went into the waiting room where they had a regular and VIP section. We were in the VIP section.
They had donuts and water for free while we waited. There were also some snacks you could pay for and the prices weren’t bad. They had to take our phones because no phones were allowed on set. If they saw you with your phone you would be asked to leave. We had to wait for a while and we didn’t have enough seats in the VIP area so I stood up and my feet really hurt. Everyone in the VIP section was being pretty loud so they moved us to the regular section while they filmed the intro to the show and I finally got to sit down. There was a guy that worked for Dr. Phil engaging the audience and we asked him questions.
We finally got to go onto the TV set for the first show. We were seated in the third row on the right side facing Dr. Phil. My mom sat next to the runway. “Shake it Off” was played to get the audience hyped and there was an improviser that would engage with the audience and have us practice some improv with sentences. For example, he had to say a statement to the person next to us and we had to reply with “Yes and …”
It was time for the show to start filming and first Dr Phil’s wife came onto the stage and then sat in her spot because she watches almost all of her husband’s shows. The first episode was about Adderall and drug addiction. At first there were some technical difficulties with the light but everything eventually worked. There were parents that talked to Dr. Phil about how their son committed due to his adderall abuse. Some of the other guests were doctors and others that have experiences with taking adderall. We were filming for about 2 hours where we had to stay there the whole time. It was fun to see the behind the scenes. After those long hours we finally got to have our lunch break where they just had pizza, chips, and water.
We had to wait a while again before we filmed the second episode, but it wasn’t as long this time. The same guy that had us do improv, asked three people to come on stage to play a game about music. My friend Riley came up to play it! It was about trying to guess the song with the lyrics spoken with a siri voice and no music in the background. Riley didn’t win, but everyone still got prizes. The person who won first place got the best prize and so on.
They had us sit on the opposite side of where we were in the first episode, so we sat on the left side facing Dr. Phil. This time we were in about the sixth row, but we were sitting in front of Dr. Phil’s wife. This episode was about shaken baby syndrome. More specifically trying to stop the execution of Robert Roberson. He is supposed to be executed on Oct 17, so this episode should come out soon. During this episode one of the guests was trying to argue that shaken baby syndrome wasn’t even possible. Dr. Phil shut her out real quick.
During this episode Dr. Phil’s wife kept on talking to my sister, her friend, and I. Then she was like “I have gifts for you girls.” She gave us mugs and foam stress relievers shaped like a heart. They both said “Dr. Phil” on them. I was glad that I got a mug because I wanted to buy one anyway. Then they filmed the intro of the next episode then our long day was finally over. It was very crowded when we walked out.
We left at about 5:50. It was a great experience going to be in the Dr. Phil audience. I’m so thankful that I actually got to meet him because I never thought I would. I don’t know exactly when the episodes will air but the one about shaken baby syndrome should come about in about a week. I had a very fun time and was glad I was able to enjoy this experience with my sister, friend, and mom.
