'Jeopardy!' Host Mayim Bialik Praises Note Producers Shared on Her Hosting Skills

Jeopardy! host Mayim Bialik has revealed that producers asked her to calm down a little when hosting. Bialik was chosen along with Ken Jennings as a semi-permanent host for the program's 38th season. In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, Bialik mentioned that producers had asked her to keep in her excitement for contestants.

"One of the neat things about having a woman in this role is it's bringing up a lot of questions about the labels we put on those things. One of my biggest challenges is, I'm so impressed that people know the answers that they've asked me to tone down how excited I am when people get them right, which I think is a great note to get."

Following the death of Alex Trebek in 2020, Jeopardy! underwent a rocky search for its next host. The show's executive producer Mike Richards was initially tapped to replace Trebek permanently but was fired from Jeopardy! after past allegations of harassment surfaced. Bialik said, concerning the show's troubled audition process, "It is a huge thing to lose Alex [Trebek]—not just for the larger community, but for the Jeopardy! community. It's a huge loss. And it's a completely different media landscape now." 

"We have the complete ability to have access to people, and as I've experienced, you can have people pass around a piece of information that's not true on Twitter, and it can grow exponentially," she added. "I think Jeopardy! was a perfect example of all the things that can go wrong in terms of social media and the handling by social media of certain information that normally people would know very little about."

The Call Me Kat actress noted that she never expected to become more than a guest host and is just enjoying the ride. "It's been a lot. I guest-hosted Jeopardy! and that was super awesome, but I was working a full-time job as a sitcom actor, so it wasn't like I was planning on having two jobs, as I do. At this point, I only know through the end of this Jeopardy! season what I do, and hopefully, I'll find out at some point what happens next. But yeah, it's been very surreal."