Mayim and Ken, welcome to Inside Jeopardy!
Thank you. Happy to be here. It's official.
You are our host.
Mayim, what does it mean to you to be hosting Jeopardy!
officially?
It's very exciting and especially exciting to get to
to share this honor and this platform with Ken, who is such a legend.
And it's very exciting.
It's overwhelming, but in a really good way.
Ken how about for you?
I'm just such a fan of the show.
Like, to this day, I feel like a fan.
You know,
I wouldn't be the person I am without all the Jeopardy! I watched as a kid.
And then, of course, it changed my life in a big way.
20 years ago, it's just an honor to be associated with the show in any way.
And now with Mayim, double the perks.
I think both of you have learned how passionate our fans are, and oftentimes
they love to share kind words and sometimes not so kind.
You both had to live this, your real people living this in real time.
What has that been like?
I mean, we're still people, so, you know, I can't say that,
you know, when you hear things that are constructive
criticism that you don't start thinking a little too much about it.
But I don't know.
I kind of take everybody's
opinion, both with a grain of salt and also believe
everybody has a right to their opinion.
I don't know. Yeah.
Even as a contestant,
I remember being shocked at how free it was the early days of the Internet,
but people were still very much like, Oh, I'm sick of this guy already.
And I'm like, oh, there's like three more months and
this guy is going to have a bad summer.
And I just kind of had to disassociate like, you know what?
Jeopardy's got such a big, diverse audience.
You're not going to be able to please everybody every night.
But I think that's the virtue of having a couple hosts,
you know, it's a big, diverse audience.
And maybe that helps broaden the tent.
You know, it's a it's a matter of taste hosting style.
I like you much better than I like myself.
Oh, likewise.
I like you both.
I think what's interesting is people don't realize
that you have spent very little time together
up until this point, because obviously, if you're hosting Ken you're not here.
At Mayim’s request.
You know, because of COVID, there were so many rules and restrictions
around things.
I think people were wondering if we were the same person.
And just doing a lab like.
Superman and Clark Kent.
You know, it's been really nice to get to actually physically be together.
And yeah, it makes it really fun.
This is the first day we're really kind of hanging out here.
That's us. Like we do.
Actually, you did have one other chance to hang out.
I know recently, not on the Jeopardy!
set, but on your stomping grounds at “Call me Kat”.
What was that like?
Yeah.
Ken, very very graciously appears in our season opener of “Call Me Kat”.
It's very exciting. It was exciting.
I mean, pretty much for everyone, because I know you're very humble,
but everybody freaked out when they heard that Ken Jennings was coming.
The episode is called “Call Me Ken Jennings”.
And that's at my request.
It's really fun.
And it was, you know,
it's very meta to have my character meeting Ken Jennings and.
I play myself. He plays himself. Like a mysterious figure from Kat’s past.
And you're you're very you're very funny.
And you did a really great job.
I mean, a sitcom set is very, very different than what you do here.
But everybody was completely just tickled by you.
And your continuity was really good because we have to do it a bunch of times.
And you were hilarious. And it was really fun.
I was geeking out like, just to see kind of... because I love multi-camera
sitcoms so much, and I'd never been on the stage of one.
So just to see all the intricate like military maneuvers
that have to happen for that to come off,
like the fact that you do that 22 times a year is a miracle.
I do, yeah, it was. But it was really it was really fun.
And you told me Ken got a few laughs.
And I said, Mayim said you got a few laughs.
And he talked it off too. Like I said, Well, there's no studio audience.
Somebody has to laugh. No, it was very.
It was very. funny.
It's a good bit like Mayim carries it because she's kind of the chatty
passenger on the plane.
And I just want to put my headphones on. I'm playing Grumpy Ken myself.
It's very funny. It's very easy to play method acting.
You will have to wait a few weeks.
But September 29th is the debut of season three of "Call me Kat".
That's right. That's when you can see both of them.
Special guest star Ken Jennings.
Da da da.
Now, Alex Trebek hosted this show for nearly 37 years.
I think we all knew just how easy he made it
look, but no one knows better than the two of you.
What do you think is the most challenging part of trying to host the show?
I mean, I watched Alex do it up close and I didn't understand
the kind of ease and grace he had
because you're doing so many things at once, right?
You're trying to run the show for the contestants,
so you're part of the game just like the writers of the board,
but you're also trying to interpret it for the folks at home.
So it's like you're a sportscaster almost, and it goes so fast.
It really does go fast.
I mean, you know, I think people don't realize how many things
you're calculating as host because you want to move things along.
You also want to give things their fair weight.
Also, there's someone in your ear and, you know,
there's many opportunities for, oh, my gosh, that was the wrong thing to say.
And, you know, there's a lot of going back.
There's a lot of editing.
I find Final Jeopardy very hard because there's a lot of math.
There's like they give you a card with like a dozen numbers.
It's so many numbers!
They're just swimming around your head like you're good will hunting.
Well, I think also, I mean, I don't know if it's like this for you,
but I feel like if I make a mistake, even if we can go back and edit it,
it feels very embarrassing.
Because I think people are like, oh, she's a celebrity or oh, she's got a Ph.D.
She shouldn't make simple math errors, but sometimes I do.
And it's very stressful. Sorry.
Smart contestants, smart audience.
And then I like on the toss to commercial, I like say my name wrong or something.
And I'm like, wow, what is even happening?
What is happening?
And Mayim, you in particular, I know you put such pressure on yourself
with every response.
You always want to make sure
that you answer correctly to the contestants because
you know how much this means to them.
I see you and you're just like, I don't want to make a call.
That isn't the right call.
Yeah. I feel I mean, that's just sort of how I am in life.
I feel a tremendous responsibility for other people's happiness,
which sometimes is good and sometimes is a real burden.
But when it comes to being here, I think especially because of the legacy,
the legacy of Alex and the legacy of Ken, you know, it's
it is it's a lot of pressure.
Ken’s like, yeah it is!
I've done the opposite.
I've liked ruled too fast.
And people over here are like,
no, no, no, Ken, you know, you know, they're calling attention to my mistakes.
So, you know, the pace is impossible to get right. Right.
Aside from the pressure, what do you think is the most rewarding part of the job?
Oh, I just love watching people play I love the excitement.
I love the competition.
You know, I'm a person that is very competitive and I do love games.
I love sports.
To me, this is like it's a it's a sport.
And when people get excited,
when they get disappointed, I just love seeing it all, you know?
Yeah, I've played the game and it's so fun.
Have you now? Once or twice.
A couple times.
But it's just a very intense adrenaline experience
that you kind of chase for the rest of your life.
And when the games get really good out here,
when the three players are really cooking and it's intense and it's close
I kind of feel like I'm in there playing, you know, you're part of the game, you're
part of the show. There's
this transcendent thing that happens where the audience is is locked in.
And I just live for that.
Can you walk us through kind of what a a day of hosting Jeopardy!
looks like?
Well, I come in looking like Ken, and then they make me look like this.
Like looking like me right now? This good?
I think, you know, for for me,
you know, it's it's putting on your game face.
It's putting on your game hair and your game clothes.
So yeah, we we start early and go over the clues and get to spend time.
Some of my favorite time is the time with the writers
and just getting to see how they work and how they communicate.
It really feels like I'm back in grad school
where you're just kind of watching incredible minds put things together
and we check and make sure it makes sense and that everything feels
kind of copacetic.
And then, yeah, I get into hair and makeup
from the first, you know, for me to the first pair of heels to the last,
it's like, it's like that.
You do this... You do this in high heels and backwards.
Yeah, that's right. Me and Ginger Rogers. Extra points.
Five shows, we should explain to people that we do a full week in a day.
So when Mayim's talking about, you know, putting your heads together
with the writers on on all the clues, that's five games worth of clues.
Yeah, hundreds. It's a lot of words.
There's a lot going on here on a on a tape day.
Yeah, we get a lunch break. I usually nap.
You can nap?
I can.
We can talk about it.
I do. Crazy short naps in that room.
I go get some sun because I'm from Seattle.
I just want to get outside.
And and we we technically, we share a dressing room.
Not that we're in it together.
But I always feel like, well, I hope Ken doesn't mind me napping on this couch,
you know, drool over.
Never leave me like, little pranks or anything.
Oh, no, no. There's never a frog in the fridge.
No, you never find a piece of my hair.
Here is April Fool's.
I think it could happen.
Ken, you've faced a lot of categories in your day.
What would like a dream Jeopardy! board look like for you?
Well, I'm getting a lot older, so, you know, I think it'd be if it could be
easier that would be fantastic. If it could be about soft foods.
That's kind of an interesting I’m moving into.
My dream board to have a lot of eighties pro wrestling on it.
That's an interest of mine that rarely comes up on Jeopardy.
But, you know, if it ever does I’m there.
Mayim, for you? Obviously, I love all things science.
I love anatomy categories.
I really love language.
So those are always really fun.
And the more obscure, the better.
When there's something there where I'm like, 15th century furniture,
how could there be even more than three clues on there? Five?
Right.
So yeah, I like things.
And I also just love seeing contestants like rip through those categories
of like poetry from, you know, I just I love that.
It's like watching superheroes at work.
Like, I remember that's my experience as a kid watching the show being like,
these are like the X-Men. Like, where do you get these sharp people?
I do love music, though.
I love music categories because it's fun to have
such a wide variety of contestants from different backgrounds.
And I just think it's so funny to see do we all connect
on Quiet Riot you know, like, where do we all intersect?
Quiet Riot, that's what brings America together.
The touchstone.
You're going to be hosting our new prime time Celebrity Jeopardy!. Yup.
How excited are you for that?
I'm very excited.
I know some of the celebrities that are going to be playing,
and I'm excited for kind of expanding the format
and letting people both see celebrities playing actual Jeopardy
the way we all know and love it, but also with their own personal flair.
And, you know, usually with our contestants
they're very on task and on target and want to get to the next clue.
And with some of these celebrities, I think they're also just going to enjoy
being in this environment. So I think it'll be a real combination.
And Ken, you've started in syndication for season
39 with an audience for the first time in two and a half years.
What's that been like?
It really threw me at first,
you know, during COVID we've had no studio audience here.
So you walk out to kind of dead silence, some polite, some bored clapping
from three crew members.
Three union guys are like, yeah it's Ken.
So like the
the burst of applause
that people who are just so happy to be back at Jeopardy,
like like it really moved me and I totally forgot what I was going to say.
And I had to come out and do my open again because I was so touched.
And I was in the front row like this, Ken!
She had that Ken fangirl sign, so cute.
Season 38. You were both a part of it.
What an incredible season
and now looking ahead to season 39 what are you most looking forward to?
I'd like to get less nervous as things go on, but it seems like
I'm kind of maintaining a level of anxious excitement that might just keep going.
I'd love to feel.
I don't know.
You seem a lot more relaxed, but, you know.
I never feel relaxed out here.
I always just kind of feel like, what am I...
You're a better actor than I am.
I'm really excited for the contestants.
You know, I like I know firsthand what an intense, stressful experience that is.
And one of the things I try to do is, you know,
try to talk them down and just say, like, please enjoy this day.
It was always a little bit intimidating to walk out and see Alex,
not because he inculcated that, but just because the man was a legend.
So I don't want to be part of what intimidates the contestants.
I want them to know that I got their back.
Use words like inculcated they'll feel right at home.
It's so relatable to say inculcated a lot on TV.
Well, I
think we know that no one could have ever replaced Alex.
And so in my opinion,
how great it was, how great it is that we have two incredible hosts.
You both bring different strengths and talents,
and I think it really ended up being the best that we could have ended up with.
Looking ahead to the legacy.
Just like Alex, you will both forever be a part of this legacy.
And what does that mean to you?
Oh, gosh.
I mean, it's it's kind of like larger than life even to sort of fathom,
you know, for me, I really feel like I'm joining a family that is well-established
and also a really strong and connected family.
So that's really been really nice.
To join, to know that there's a real sense of community here and family here.
I've been in the industry, you know, for, gosh, 30.
Yeah, almost 40 years.
And it's really nice.
It's nice to come to a place where people
like to be here, want to be here and want to keep creating this thing
that really doesn't need to change much because it's so good the way it is.
There's also that community of viewers,
you know, what the show means in people's lives.
You know, people a lot of people plan their day around Jeopardy!.
It's it's the exciting little treat for them
in the in the evening or the afternoon or whenever they watch.
And it's important to people and it's nice to feel like you're
you're kind of part of their day and part of their households as well.
That's that's very flattering. And,
you know, Jeopardy is guaranteed to last,
unlike a lot of other things in this town.
So it's a great gig.
Well, for everyone who's listening, or watching,
we want you to know that as we mentioned,
Ken will start off season 39 in syndication on September 12th,
Mayim will kick off Celebrity Jeopardy on September 25th and then in the New
Year, we're going to go back to syndication with the two of you.
Thanks. Alex was such a legend, it took two people to replace him.
That's what I was trying to say earlier.
But you know, in a kinder way. You got there.
All right.
Well, thank you both for joining us on Inside Jeopardy!
And let's look forward to the season ahead. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks Sarah.
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