Sam Stapleton, the current champ, whose “reign” spanned the transition from Ken to Mike Richards, posted this on the Jeopardy! Contestants’ Facebook group:
With Mike Richards’ run starting this week, I thought some of you might be interested in what I experienced as the contestant who taped with both Ken and Mike.
Everything about Mike’s appearance screams “last minute decision.” The shows that aired this past week taped back on December 16th. At that taping, Ken’s intros repeatedly promoted the upcoming Tournament of Champions – the original intro and ending to my show on Friday indicated that the show would be taking two weeks off for the TOC, and I was under the impression when I left that day that there would be a break between my appearances.
When I returned for the next taping on January 11th, I was surprised to find out that the TOC hadn’t taped, and that the air dates had been moved up. Basically, in between December 16th and January 11th, COVID spiked again in LA, the state put in a bunch of travel restrictions, and things shut back down again even more than they already were. As you saw last week, all the references to the TOC were edited out.
In the pre-show briefing, we were immediately told that there would be a new guest host. The briefing definitely had a different tone – in addition to all the usual stuff, there was a lot of “please be patient,” “key in on the written clue because the host might misread,” etc. When they told us it would be Mike, we were also notified that he would be doing the rehearsal as well, just to give him as much time as possible to get prepared.
The downside of all this was that the taping took a lot longer than with Ken – more stops and starts, more questions, etc. But the upside was that Mike was incredibly friendly and made a genuine effort to make contestants relax and feel at home. Ken’s taping was very buttoned up; taping with Mike had a “we’re all in this together” vibe, and personally, I felt a lot more relaxed as a result. I’ll be interested to see how that all translates to the screen.
From everything I can tell, Mike’s appearance stemmed directly from COVID restrictions. It seemed like the end of Ken’s run was pre-planned, but that the upcoming guest host had to pull out at the last minute. (If I remember correctly, Mike references this in his intro to tonight’s show). I don’t have inside knowledge, but I got the sense that this was a choice between Mike stepping in or cancelling the taping altogether. I appreciate that they made the decision to keep it going.
Obviously as a current contestant I can’t say much more without spoiling anything, but I thought I’d throw in my perspective as we go into this new week of shows.