Jeopardy champs slam studio over offer to return, cross WGA picket line

Jeopardy! just isn’t like different recreation exhibits. Players who go the exams, nail the interviews, and obtain the decision to take the stage to take a look at their trivia information have usually waited years for the chance — it’s a dream come true. A second probability is principally unparalleled, save for the few who wind up on a Tournament of Champions-qualifying profitable streak.

But thanks to extraordinary circumstances, a second probability is precisely what the present is providing to some former gamers: As of now, Jeopardy!’s fortieth season, set to premiere on Sept. 11, is inviting choose contestants from earlier seasons to play in a brand new set of video games. The season will begin with a Second Chance match, wherein gamers from the COVID-restricted season 37 who excelled however didn’t win will return for one more probability at glory. Later within the season, a Champion’s Wild Card match will convey collectively champs from seasons 37 and 38, together with the Second Chance winners, to face off in a good greater showdown.

As 5 former Jeopardy! contestants who had been supplied spots in these tournaments inform Polygon, it’s the chance of a lifetime — once more. It’s additionally an moral nightmare.

“When I got a call gauging my interest in participating, my initial reaction was pure shock, because I’d given up any fantasies about being invited back,” one season 38 champion says. (All spoke on situation of anonymity, in order not to have an effect on their possibilities to seem on Jeopardy! sooner or later.) “But once that initial shock wore off, it was replaced by the dread of having to make an impossible decision.”

Photo: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg by way of Getty Images

If Sony Pictures Entertainment, which produces Jeopardy!, goes ahead with its present plans for season 40, cameras will roll as hundreds of members of the Writers Guild of America stay on strike towards the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over a lapsed labor contract. Jeopardy! employs WGA writers to give you its snappy trivia clues, however for now, with out newly written solutions and questions obtainable, the present plans to use “a combination of material that our WGA writers wrote before the strike, which is still in the database, and material that is being redeployed from multiple, multiple seasons of the show,” stated Jeopardy! showrunner Michael Davies on this week’s episode of the Inside Jeopardy! podcast. Davies additionally spoke concerning the writers’ significance to the present itself and as a part of the “family” of behind-the-scenes individuals who make it. “There is something I have to say right at the outset, and that is how much I admire and miss our writers,” he stated. “They are beloved and valued members of the Jeopardy! team, just as they value every other member of our team.”

Jeopardy! producers have already reached out to sure contestants from seasons 37 and 38 so as to e book tape dates for the upcoming tournaments. But how lengthy Sony will want to depend on returning gamers and outdated materials is a big query, for the present and your entire trade; there’s at present no finish to the strike in sight. A Deadline report earlier in August prompt that the WGA and AMPTP had been at a standstill over the mere concept of returning to the bargaining desk.

But in accordance to the WGA, there is no such thing as a ambiguity in what deciding to seem on the sport present would imply for a participant’s relationship to the putting workforce.

“Jeopardy is produced by a struck company,” a WGA spokesperson advised Polygon by way of e mail. “Anyone participating in a Jeopardy production would be crossing a picket line comprised of Jeopardy writers who wrote the clues.”

For one former season 37 contestant, who wrote to Polygon over e mail, the taping of her Jeopardy! win stands out as “a completely perfect day.” So when a contestant coordinator referred to as her out of the blue earlier this month to offer a match slot, a rush of emotion got here flooding again.

“The idea that I get to go back and do this again?” she says. “And this time without the strict COVID regulations? Someone would actually do my hair and makeup? I could take a picture standing next to the host? And even better — I would be in a tournament?!? I’ve heard such amazing stories of the tournament experience (win or lose) and I was so excited to be a part of that. My brain was just reeling at this new opportunity that I never thought I would have.”

Still, she politely declined — at the very least for now. While she was more than pleased to play in a match once more, she wouldn’t take part so long as the WGA strike “was unresolved.” The contestant coordinator advised her that she wasn’t the primary particular person to come again with that response.

“I am so angry at the show and Sony leadership for doing this,” she says. “Calling with vague invitations on Thursday and then announcing publicly on Monday what the plan was before telling the invitees? Waiting to tape season 39 [Tournament of Champions] and any possible season 39 Second Chance or Wild Card tournaments until the strike is resolved… but somehow it’s okay to invite season 37/38 players?”

Photo illustration: Will Joel/Polygon | Source photograph: Sony Pictures Entertainment

The different former champions talking to Polygon about being supplied a Jeopardy! reappearance categorical an analogous unease over their desires being pitted towards a perception in what the WGA is combating for. While the strike circumstances got here up in at the very least one offer, wherein a contestant coordinator expressed solidarity with these on strike and affirmed that no union writers crossed the picket line to create new content material, the caveats haven’t offered a lot consolation.

A season 38 participant, who spent months making ready for what would end up to be a two-episode run on the sequence, notes that whereas collaborating in season 40 could not represent scabbing within the literal sense — he wouldn’t be changing the putting employees concerned with the present — his place as a dues-paying member of a special labor union makes solidarity a precedence for him. He gained’t undermine the strike.

“I realize that there are other contracts at play among the other crew members that make Jeopardy! possible,” he says, “but we’d still be charged with walking through a passionate group of human beings fighting for their livelihoods in order to play a game. Do I expect them to see my solid-colored business casual wear and practice buzzer and go, ‘Oh, if it’s for Jeopardy! it’s cool?’ Of course not. And I wouldn’t want them to.”

Two different season 38 champions supplied spots in a season 40 match say they really feel lucky to be in a snug sufficient monetary place in order not to really feel the draw of the potential prize cash. But each know that’s not the case for each former contestant that Jeopardy! is asking to make an agonizing name. “I won’t judge them if they accept,” says one of many champions, “but I’m certainly judging the studio for putting us in this position.”

Still, there’s that tug of reliving the push of play another time. “I feel like I’ll regret it forever if I decline what is likely my one chance to go back on the show,” one former champion says. “But I’ll also regret it forever if I accept but have to cross the picket line to do it. It honestly makes me wish I’d never gotten the invitation at all.”

While the Jeopardy! champions Polygon spoke with all have robust emotions about not crossing the picket line, a number of are holding out hope that the strike is likely to be resolved in time for them to take part. One of the season 38 gamers requested the contestant coordinator to schedule his tape date “as late in the year as possible, because it gives the studios enough time to meet the writers’ demands.” He says he plans to test together with his personal union’s management to “discuss all possible consequences or ramifications to crossing the WGA picket line,” however provides that if Jeopardy! requested him to determine now, it will be a tough no.

As they mull the chance and hope for decision, these contestants all carry some stage of disappointment within the producers of their favourite present for even asking within the first place. One participant refers to it as a “betrayal.” Another says the offer felt like a “gut-punch.” Everyone needed to return to the Jeopardy! stage, however not like this.

“It’s honestly souring my opinion of Jeopardy! for putting us in this position, having to choose between supporting the strike and going back on the show that many of us have loved our whole lives,” says a season 38 champion. “I also think if I decline the invitation, it will be easy for the production to find someone who’s happy to replace me. It makes me wonder if it would be better to just cross the picket line but donate my winnings, than for someone who doesn’t care about the strike at all to take my place. I really don’t know what the right thing is to do.”

Hours later, the contestant reached out to Polygon once more to say she had declined.

[Disclosure: Samit Sarkar appeared on Jeopardy! in 2021, during season 38, but he is not one of the former contestants who are potentially eligible for the season 40 tournaments.]