Would current 'Jeopardy!' champion Amy Schneider consider hosting? Here's what she said.
Reigning Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider is still very much a contestant, but when that changes — assuming it will one day — she's open to offers to host.
"It would certainly be a cool experience," she told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Tuesday, in which the question was put to her. "It's a lot harder than it looks. Whether I'd actually even be good at it, I don't know ... But yeah, I'd certainly consider it if somebody asked.”
For the record, Schneider also praised Ken Jennings, who once sat where she is, for doing a "fantastic" job as the current interim host. He and actress Mayim Bialik are sharing duties while the show searches for a permanent replacement for Alex Trebek, who died of pancreatic cancer in November 2020.
Their first attempt to replace him didn't go so well. Making matters worse, on the same day that Schneider's comments went wide, USA Today reported that CNN legal analyst Laura Coates, who Trebek himself had once named as someone who could take over from him, said her offer to host had been flatly rejected by producers. Yahoo Entertainment has reached out to the show for comment.
Elsewhere in Schneider's conversation, she described her feelings about having just missed Trebek, who continued hosting right up until his death. His last day of filming was Oct. 29, 2020, and the episode only aired the following January, while Schneider made her first appearance on the episode that aired Nov. 17, 2021. She was supposed to have appeared earlier, but her taping was delayed due to COVID-19.
"It was really tough to know that I'd come so close to getting to meet somebody who was, in a way, a hero of mine and came up just short. But I guess things happen for a reason," Schneider said. "In retrospect, while I'm certainly sorry not to have gotten the chance to meet Alex, I also am glad that... it happened now instead of when it was supposed to, because I had not yet started dating my girlfriend, Genevieve, and just in general, I didn't have sort of the support system I have."
As it is, Schneider has rocked her time on the game show, earning more than $1 million in her 34 wins, setting records and making history all the while. One of her big achievements is that she's the first openly transgender contestant to qualify for the show's Tournament of Champions.
"Specifically around the previous trans contestants that have been on — that meant a lot to me to see them and be able to envision myself where they were," she said.
Another accomplishment is that she's the most successful female contestant to ever compete on Jeopardy!. Schneider has credited her mother, a former math scholar, with inspiring and supporting her.
"Jeopardy! has been a boys' club... and a lot of it is about all the messages that you get from society that this isn't what women do. That women don't know things," Schneider said. "I got those messages as well. But I had my mom right there the whole time as a living counter-example to all of them... I always had that counteracting the messages that might have discouraged me not just from learning, but wanting to show off that learning."
