Actor Ike Barinholtz was nonetheless letting the “absolute dream” of getting received the movie star model of his longtime favourite recreation present, Jeopardy!, sink on this week when he was invited to play in the upcoming Tournament of Champions, which in the previous has been restricted to contestants who’ve received a number of video games of the non-celeb model. He’ll be the very first movie star champ to compete.
“Don’t ask me how I’m gonna do, because I don’t know if I’m going to do very well,” he tells Yahoo Entertainment earlier than laughing. “But, here’s the thing, like, it would be against this year’s champions. It’s gonna be incredibly difficult.… I’m just going in to have fun. To me, it’s like, I’m not looking at it as the all-star game, I’m looking at it as like the celeb all-star game, and I’m just gonna try to have fun. That way, when I get completely annihilated, I can say that I was just trying to have fun.”
But, severely, he is excited.
“It really is gonna be exhilarating,” Barinholtz says. “It’s gonna be just so cool to be up there with all those smarties and playing the real game. The thought of me playing the real Jeopardy! game is just absolutely wild.”
Barinholtz landed the invite after triumphing in a bracket that included the likes of Aisha Tyler, Andy Richter and Constance Wu. He confronted Will Wheaton and Patton Oswalt in the finals, and he bested Oswalt by simply $1 in the dramatic end, pocketing $1 million for Pacific Clinics’ Hollgrove applications.
So it wasn’t simple. And but, as a longtime viewer, Barinholtz acknowledges that the clues on Celebrity Jeopardy! are usually not fairly the similar. He understands that the famed TOC, which is anticipated to happen later this yr, will probably be much more troublesome than that.
“The questions are definitely easier than regular Jeopardy!,” Barinholtz says earlier than cracking a joke. “That is because there’s just a part of a celebrity’s brain that is different than a normal person’s brain. It’s the part of the brain that we use to, like, walk down a red carpet or remember our lines. So we don’t have access to this extra part of the brain that non-celebs have that allows them to retain more information, so the questions have to be easier.”
The actor finest identified for his work on comedies akin to The Mindy Project, MADtv and the Neighbors motion pictures, says folks have defined simply how shocked they had been that he received. His characters aren’t often the quiz present champion-type.
“A lot of people, at least online, were like, ‘Whoa, I didn’t know Morgan was smart!'” Barinholtz says of his The Mindy Project character. “I think a lot of the things I’ve done, I play like a — I guess buffoon is the best word — and so there were definitely people online who were like, ‘Whoa, cool. I thought that guy was dumb, but in real life he’s not so dumb.’ But I think my friends and family were not surprised, because they know I’m good at trivia, but also I’m kind of dumb. So they were like, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.'”
Yes, it seems that the former Morgan Tookers, is a trivia nerd.
“I just remember in the ’80s, you know, my folks watching Jeopardy! and playing Trivial Pursuit with their friends,” Barinholtz says. “And my brain is wired to remember random things, while also forgetting things like my Social Security number sometimes.”
He’s not giving himself sufficient credit score, in fact. The reality is that, when Barinholtz was in highschool, he was a part of a trivia staff that received the Illinois state championship in 1994. He insists that he was the “solid fourth man” on the staff then, and he is simply at all times participated in quiz nights or pub trivia ever since.
He traces all of it again to the present that was then hosted by the late, however nonetheless beloved Alex Trebek.
“My relationship with Jeopardy! was always a very serious one. We were not casually dating. We were very much in love,” Barinholtz deadpans. “No, I’ve been watching the show since I was a child. My parents love trivia, and they would always watch it. I would just sit there and watch them answer questions… As I got older, I started learning — what’s the word? — information. And I started, yes, playing myself, watching almost every night, myself, and so I’ve just been a huge, huge fan for 30 years, I would say now. I believe I got asked to be on some new game, and I was like, I’m not interested. If Jeopardy! calls, let me know.”
About two weeks later, they did! Barinholtz thinks he may need been requested to come back on Celebrity Jeopardy! as a result of he beforehand appeared on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? when present Jeopardy! government producer Michael Davies labored on it.
“I was just so, so, so excited,” Barinholtz says. “It was just an absolute dream.”
After seeing his efficiency, folks have requested him what he did to arrange. His reply is easy: He watched. He practiced clicking a pen, which stood in for the buzzer, whereas watching at residence as soon as he had performed his first recreation. The actor says he additionally started stopping himself from simply blurting out a solution as soon as he thought he knew it, as a result of the present’s guidelines mandate that the host has to learn the whole clue earlier than contestants can reply.
Before the ultimate present aired, when he confronted off in opposition to Oswalt and Wheaton, Barinholtz says he was miraculously capable of preserve his massive win a secret. A neighbor supplied to throw him a watch get together, not figuring out if he received or misplaced, and he agreed. His dad and mom — who began all of it — his brother and a bunch of others attended.
“And it was just perfect. They probably had an idea that I won because otherwise maybe I wouldn’t have invited everyone over, but watching the game back… it was just a very enjoyable game,” Barinholtz says. “It was very back and forth. I think there was a moment where most of the guests were like, ‘Oh, maybe he lost. He came in second.’ And then, for the last moment, big cheers. And we all hugged. And I poured myself a little extra Amaro.”
The response has been loads.
“There are still some TV shows that people watch religiously. Lots of them,” Barinholtz says. “So I have people reaching out from grade school, from MADtv, just from all these different parts of my life. People coming up to me like, ‘Good job, idiot,’ so it was really lovely. And I’m excited to be part of the Jeopardy! family now.”
He says his arm is “getting sore from carrying the trophy all over town.”
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