Maury Povich has zero regrets over the “Who’s the Daddy” segments on his eponymous ’90s talk show.
“It’s become part of the culture,” he told Page Six in a recent exclusive interview, speaking of the segment and his famous one-liner, “You are not the father.” He added, “I had no regrets during the show.”
The “Maury” show, which ran from 1991 to 1998, became famous for a segment during which men — who were either trying to establish or deny paternity — took DNA tests, with the results being revealed on air.
Povich, 87, told us he sees a silver lining attached to the often raucous segments.
“I think we basically helped a lot of kids end up with two-parent homes instead of one,” he noted. “The statistics are that if a child has two parents in their life, they [have] got a better chance at success … So that’s what I hung my hat on. That’s what I was trying to do.”
The former TV host has come out of retirement to host a new AI event. The live taping, which took place in April, had Povich attempting to mediate a messy love triangle between two friends and an AI-generated girlfriend, sponsored by the AI company, Air.
Povich told us he has no trepidations about artificial intelligence.
“I’m not scared at all,” he opined. “My son-in-law is an oncologist, and he tells me that AI is going to make everybody healthier for many, many years than they thought they would live, and that it’s the greatest boon to medicine there is.”
“So, in that way, I’m very excited,” he added.
Povich, one of the producers on his hugely successful syndicated show, told us he is grateful for his success.
“I’m very fortunate,” he said. “I never expected to make a lot of money in television since I was a news journalist for the first 25 years. Didn’t make much money there. And so I was happy to be. I was happy to be. Happy to live well the second half of my life.”
Povich remembers what he did with his first big paycheck.
“My father always worried that money burned a hole in my pocket even though I didn’t have it,” he explained, referring to legendary sports writer Shirley Povich. “So one of the things I did was to send him a plane so he could go to his hometown of Bar Harbor, Maine.
“And when he got into the plane and picked me up in New York, he looked at me, and he said, ‘I’m not going to worry about you anymore.’”