Life behind the scenes at “The Maury Povich Show” is fit for an episode of the sensational program – it’s “permeated with the use of alcohol, pornographic videos and parties inviting open and notorious sexual activities,” an employee charged yesterday.
In a $100 million lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, associate producer Bianca Nardi charges that she was subjected to “a hostile workplace” and “sexually abusive and intimidating conduct” during her five years working for the hit daytime talk show.
Some of that “intimidating conduct” allegedly came at the hands of producer Donna Benner Ingber – who the suit says is Povich’s longtime mistress.
Povich has been married to TV newswoman Connie Chung since 1984, and they have their own show on MSNBC, “Weekends with Maury and Connie.”
A Povich show spokesman said, “We have done a complete and thorough investigation of her allegations of harassment and we are satisfied there is no merit to them.”
He wouldn’t comment on the allegations of infidelity, and said that Povich was unavailable for comment.
A rep for Chung did not return a call for comment.
Nardi’s lawyer, Bruce Baron, said his client was “traumatized” by the constant drama and harassment at the show, and gained between 40 and 50 pounds from workplace stress.
Nardi said she first went to work for Povich back in 2000, and quickly found herself immersed in the show’s ” ‘Peyton Place’ lifestyle” and “poisoned atmosphere,” which she blamed on the “longtime, intimate and sexual relationship” between Povich and Ingber. The suit says the show’s executive producer, Paul Faulhaber, was angry at the special treatment Ingber would get from Povich, and took his frustration out on Nardi by forcing her “to run a gantlet of sexually abusive and intimidating conduct.”
That allegedly included “directing her to expose her breasts and to have them photographed and shown” on air.
She said things got even worse when she went to work for Ingber, a nightmare boss who would drunkenly call her home at all hours “to discuss her personal relations” with Povich and gab about “other men whom she was secretly seeing.”