Ken Jennings Responds To Announcement About New Permanent Jeopardy! Hosts
Ken Jennings responds to the Jeopardy host news!
This article is more than 2 years old
Since the long-running Jeopardy! host, Alex Trebek passed away in 2020, the matter of appointing a new host for the game show had become a big headache for its creators. The issue was recently resolved after it was decided that former Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings and The Big Bang Theory actress Mayim Bialik, who replaced Mike Richards, will continue to co-host the show throughout the currently airing 38th season. A day after the mega announcement, Jennings took to Twitter to share his elated response to the news.
It was recently reported by Deadline that both Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings will continue to share hosting duties for Jeopardy! till the end of the 38th season, which is scheduled to conclude on Friday, July 29, 2022. While this is still a temporary arrangement and both Jennings and Bialik haven’t been given permanent positions, the former is still “delighted” that he and Bialik will be hosting throughout the current season. Check out his post below:
Ken Jennings is renowned for his 74-episode run on the trivia show from June to November 2004. He earned a whopping $2.52 million on the show, thus becoming the highest-earning American game show winner of all time. Many congratulated him on the “promotion” in the comments and expressed their wish for Jennings to become the full-time host of the game show. But like the past choices for Jeopardy! host, his appointment has not been without its fair share of controversial developments either.
In November 2020, after Ken Jennings assumed hosting duties post Alex Trabek’s death, he faced a severe online backlash for a six-year-old tweet. The tweet read: “Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair.” Even though, when he posted the tweet, many bashed his tweet for being extremely insensitive, he refused to remove the post and defended that he is “strongly against deleting old tweets, even the gross ones.” He only deleted the post after being chosen as the interim host of Jeopardy! Actor Yvette Nicole Brown pointed out the same and sarcastically questioned his motivation behind finally taking down the tweet which had been opposed by many.
Another one of his tweets that surfaced in the light of his appointment as the temporary host of Jeopardy! was a 2015 post where he mocked a Star Wars fan who was terminally ill and has expressed his final wish to watch The Force Awakens. Apart from deleting the first-mentioned tweet, Ken Jennings even took to Twitter in 2020 to pen a length apology to “own up” to his past “unartful and insensitive” tweets that he perceived as jokes in his head but was “dismayed to see how they read on screen.”
Ken Jennings also addressed his 2018 post where he stood by not deleting his posts as removing them felt like “whitewashing a mistake.” He agreed that this instead gave off the incorrect impression that he stands by “every failed joke I’ve ever posted here.” He has extended his apologies to anyone who has been offended by the “dumb things” he has said and clarified that he never intentionally wanted to hurt anyone. As for his stint as the Jeopardy! host since 2020, he has been more positively received than Mayim Bialik and fans of the popular trivia show even dig his never-ending stock of dad jokes as well!
