Most people don’t appear on Dr. Phil expecting to come out victorious, but Chaz Carti says he was confident he would.
During the Nov. 2 episode of the Creators Inc. Podcast, the Georgia native reflected on the experience with host Andy Bachman, revealing what went on behind the scenes of his unexpected television debut.
Carti first gained widespread attention during the pandemic through his bucket prank trend and confetti stunts in store aisles, earning millions of views on TikTok while he was still in high school. Then, he received an unexpected phone call.
“Dr. Phil calls me. I thought it was a joke,” he told Bachman. “I thought it was like my friends pranking me cuz I’m pranking everybody.”
But it turned out to be real. At just 17, Carti appeared on the Jan. 7, 2021, episode titled “New Year … New You,” after his father reached out to Dr. Phil for help convincing him not to abandon college plans in pursuit of a social media career.
“My parents were pissed,” the prankster recalled, explaining their reaction when he quit lacrosse. “They’re like, ‘What are you doing? You’re so good at this. Are you serious? Like, what are these videos?’”
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Carti joined the show through Zoom, and according to him, the conversation quickly took an unpleasant turn.
“[Dr. Phil] brought some other guy on there and they’re just bashing me,” he recalled. “They made this like highlight reel of me making me look so crazy.”
Despite the criticism, Carti maintained his composure throughout the segment. “I handled it professionally. I didn’t really come at them. They came at me.”
Ironically, his appearance on the show ended up working to his advantage.
“After I was on there, everyone kind of like shut up. All the haters shut up. My parents finally shut up,” he said. “They’re like, ‘You’re on TV.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s what it took to be on TV? Oh, now it’s not a bad thing? Now I do social media. Now I’m on TV. Now you guys are finally off my a** a little bit.’”
Carti isn’t the only internet personality who has questioned how Dr. Phil presented him on the show. In 2021, Bhad Bhabie accused the show of editing some of her responses during her viral 2016 appearance, claiming viewers were only shown half of what actually happened.
Dr. Phil has faced a difficult run since then. His daytime show came to an end in 2023, while his media network, Merit Street Media, was ordered to liquidate its assets last year.
Meanwhile, Carti continued to build his career. He told Bachman that he walked away from a Division I lacrosse commitment to focus on content creation, spending a year recording fake survival videos along Georgia’s coast and livestreaming from Lake Lanier, where he claims to have averaged about 10,000 viewers.
“You have to be you,” he said. “No one’s like me. No one has my story. No one has your story, you know?”
Bachman, whose talent firm, Creators Inc., reports generating more than $2 billion in creator sales, said the 23-year-old sounded more like an entrepreneur than a prankster. “I really feel like I’m talking to an entrepreneur,” he said.
The talent manager also teased a possible future partnership. “I might be working on something that we’re going to need you to come host here at Creators Inc.,” Bachman said. “Stay tuned on that.”
