While opening about the Jeopardy! hosting scandal that saw Mike Richards get booted from the coveted gig after just one day, the former TV producer also revealed some secrets about how some of America’s classic game show prepare for catastrophe.
According to Richards, The Price is Right is well aware that contestants get overly excited about during the course of the show. Whether their name has been picked from the audience or they just want a huge prize, contestants lose their minds, and apparently, the production team is ready in case they lose control of… other things.
“When I got there, they had a system in place in case someone peed their pants,” Richards told PEOPLE:
Richards, who worked behind the scenes at places like Dick Clark productions and Jeopardy!, was at Price is Right as it transitioned from the Bob Barker-hosting era to the Drew Carey-hosting era.
“I never saw it happen, but there were curtains and a blow dryer and [a] pair of sweats just in case, since we’d have to get on with the show,” he recalls.
While Richards never got to activate The Price is Right‘s Pee Protocol, he did have to deal with one heck of a day early in his career. Richards helped launch the newly revamped Let’s Make a Deal with Wayne Brady as the host, which filmed in a sweltering hot studio in Las Vegas that didn’t exactly entice people to be a part of the audience.
“I’ll also never forget one time the audience coordinator ran up to me and said we only had 15 people in the audience for a 280-person theater. I was like, ‘Oh great,’” Richards recalled. “And then, someone else came up to me and said ‘Somebody just drove a forklift through the back of the Porsche we were going to give away as the big deal of the day.’ The executive producer looks at me and goes, ‘I got the Porsche. You get the audience.’”
(Via PEOPLE)