The dark secrets behind legendary ”The Price Is Right” host Bob Barker have been exposed.
The host, who died at 99 in 2023, has been accused of creating a toxic workplace in a new E! docuseries Dirty Rotten Scandals, in which “Barker’s Beauties” Holly Hallstrom, Kathleen Bradley and Claudia Jordan spill on the long-running show.
E’s new docuseries, spotlights Barker in a two-part episode and delves into the secrets of his sordid past.
One of the biggest scandals on the show, where Barker hosted from the 1970s until the early 2000s, centered on an affair between Barker and model, Dian Parkinson.
At first they attempted to hide the illicit affair but it quickly became obvious, especially as the pair would regularly have dressing room sex during film breaks.
Barker died in 2023 at 99, but the darker chapters of his story are only now coming to light.
The models on the show — known as “Barker’s Beauties” — say the atmosphere behind the scenes grew so toxic it became unbearable.
Holly Hallstrom, Kathleen Bradley, and Claudia Jordan appear in the docuseries, offering gritty details.
In an interview with PEOPLE, Hallstrom said, “I first realized long before the rest of the set knew that Dian and Bob were having sex.”
“I was really kind of surprised because Bob also had a girlfriend. As time went on, people were noticing.”
“She would go downstairs during the breaks and go into his dressing room, and that’s when some hanky panky was going on,” Hallstrom told the magazine.
“The next thing you know, I get a call from Bob’s girlfriend,” discussing Dian’s relationships with celebrities, including black men.
“She said, ‘Oh my gosh, Bob has no idea that he’s had sex with a woman who has had sex with black men. Bob has always said that black men are the most diseased people on Earth,” Hallstrom added.
Parkinson would eventually go on to file a lawsuit against Barker for sexual harassment, though she later dropped the suit.
After Hallstrom refused to testify in court for Barker and his lawyers, not wanting to commit perjury, she was warned that her weight was becoming a problem. She was told to address it, and eventually lost camera time.
“Next thing you know, my lawyers called and said, ‘Bob Barker just filed a lawsuit against you for defamation,’ and after that, no one spoke to me.”
Hallstrom was forced into early retirement and ended up living out of her car.
“I lost everything. I was totally broke and living out of my car.
“I couldn’t afford to stay in this lawsuit, and I would have to settle, and I was not going to do that,” she explained to PEOPLE.
She would go on to sue Barker 5 years later for “malicious prosecution.”
Bradley — the first black model on the cast — said she “knew from early on that there were mixed feelings about her joining the show.”
“[It was] not a good feeling… And one of the members of the production team brought to my attention that, inside a production meeting, when models weren’t in there, they would use the N word,” Bradley revealed to the entertainment mag.
Jordan would later join the cast and shared her own story about a producer who used the “reverse Oreo.”
He’d say, “Claudia, you get in the middle of the two white models, or tell me I’m the ass model because stereotypically, Black women have a larger behind. And I guess that’s why he wanted to grab and feel it.”
The show reportedly allowed only two black contestants at a time.
“They would have a letter B written on the card… It was pretty sad. A Black contestant may try to hug Bob Barker, and he’d kind of shrink away from them.”
Parkinson and Hallstrom weren’t the only ones to take legal action. Bradley and other models also sued Barker.
Bradley revealed, “Eventually, the truth came out why all six of us were fired. We all refused to lie to save Barker’s ass.”
