A New Story Offers a Behind-the-Scenes Account of Mike Richards' Last Day as 'Jeopardy!' Host
Does the news surrounding the Jeopardy! multiverse ever, ever end? No. The answer is no. Especially while The Ringer's Claire McNear—the journalist who dug up Mike Richards's old comments that led to his removal from the show—is still on the Jeopardy! beat.(We talked to McNear earlier this month, if you want the full breakdown.)
So, even though the Mike Richards Saga has come and gone, we're still learning new info about one of TV's greatest debacles by the week. Now, thanks to a new story from McNear, which profiles Jeopardy's latest-and-greatest champion, Matt Amodio, we have a new tidbit regarding Richards's first day as the host of Jeopardy! According to the contestants McNear interviewed, Richards delivered an address that was cut from the broadcast. Here's how they described it:
Contestants who were present during Richards’s lone day as host remember him delivering a short, on-camera address at the beginning of his first game expressing gratitude for being named permanent host; no such address appeared in last Monday’s broadcast. Players typically pose for two photos on the Jeopardy! set, one alone and one with the host, which are sent to them shortly before their episodes air. That day’s contestants received only their solo shots.
Yikes. Well, you can obviously understand why Jeopardy! would opt to leave a clip of Richards "expressing gratitude" on the cutting room floor, instead of lobbing up a dunkable speech on its permanent record. In the rest of The Ringer's story, we get a better idea of how the Richards-era contestants felt being intertwined with all of the drama.
“There is this sense of—you have waited for this thing your whole life, you put everything into trying to get on the show, and then it’s subsumed by this larger drama that you had no control over and no real role in,” said Samit Sarkar, one of the unlucky contestants to play that week. “That’s the bigger story that is swallowing up what, for you, is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to you in your life.”
Think about it: you finally get a spot on Jeopardy!, only to show up during what's likely the most controversial week in the show's history? Maybe Jeopardy! can make good with Sarkar and the rest of the contestants (who've apparently formed a group text to process all of the drama), and arrange for another appearance on the show.
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