Mayim Bialik Won't Host 'Celebrity Jeopardy!' Next Season
'The Big Bang Theory' alum will be replaced by Ken Jennings when 'Celebrity Jeopardy!' returns next month.
Mayim Bialik will not return for the upcoming season of Celebrity Jeopardy! as the show's host.
Amid the ongoing Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strike, The Big Bang Theory alum, who is a member of the SAG, has stepped away from the long-running game show in solidarity with those on the picket lines. In her place, Ken Jennings will take over hosting duties, a representative for the show confirmed to Entertainment Weekly.
Bialik initially joined Jeopardy! as one of the show's many celebrity guest hosts following the 2020 death of former long-time host Alex Trebek. The actress was eventually brought on as a permanent Jeopardy! co-host alongside Jennings and also tapped to host the spinoff series Jeopardy! National College Championship as well as Celebrity Jeopardy!'s first season. According to Variety, Bialik was asked to host the upcoming season of Celebrity Jeopardy!, but she declined the invitation due to the ongoing strikes. On Monday, ABC issued a press release with changes to their fall schedule, which reflected Jennings taking over hosting duties on the show's celebrity edition, which premieres Sept. 27 at 8 p.m. ET. Bialik has not publicly commented on the matter.
This is not the first time Bialik has stepped back from her hosting duties. In May, the actress walked off the Jeopardy! set in solidarity with the strike during the last week of filming for Season 39. The show moved forward with Jennings as host. Meanwhile, several Jeopardy! writers, including Michele Loud, Jim Rhine, and Billy Wisse, are on the picket line.
As the strikes continue, Jeopardy! showrunner Michael Davies revealed on an episode of the Inside Jeopardy! podcast how the show will move forward. According to Davies, Jeopardy! Season 40 will move forward with "a combination of material that our WGA writers wrote before the strike, which is still in the database, and material that has been redeployed from multiple seasons of the show." The series will also recycle contestants from prior seasons, beginning the season with a Second Chance tournament featuring Season 37 contestants, followed by a Champions Wild Card series, where the winners of the Second Chance competition will face off against former Season 38 champions. Davies said Celebrity Jeopardy! will return with completely original material that was completed before writers went on strike.
The decision to continue filming has been met with some backlash, including from Jeopardy! champion James Holzhauer, who posted a link to the podcast and paraphrased Davies by saying that for the first minute, Davies expressed the sentiment that "Jeopardy!'s writers are invaluable and we couldn't produce the show without them," while in the following 13 minutes, he explained, "Here is how we will produce the upcoming season without them."