Ken Jennings Shares Whether ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ or ‘Jeopardy!’ Is Harder

Exclusive

Disney/Christopher Willard

Was there another $1 million winner on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Ken Jennings and Matt Damon left off episode one at the $500,000 question on the game show. The pair’s episode continued on July 30, where they tried to win the $1 million. They only had two questions left to try and win it all.

With three lifelines left, they struggled on the $500,000 question. “With another career path already established, who got his first taste of the entertainment world when he entered a Steve Martin look-alike contest?” the question read. The options were Dr. Oz, Jerry Springer, Bill Nye, or Anthony Bourdain.

“I have straight-up never heard of this,” Ken Jennings said. “They’re all at least possible. The pair wound up going with their Ask the Host Lifeline. Jimmy Kimmel knew the answer, which was Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” who won them $500,000.

Ken Jennings is all too familiar with a Steve Martin look-alike on Jeopardy!. Fan favorite Sam Buttrey resembles the Only Murders in the Building star in looks and voice, but that wasn’t one of the options, so he had to ask for help.

They then moved on to the $1 million question, which they got right, winning $1 million for Matt Damon’s charity, Water.org. The question read, “Which of these words is often used to describe one of the most beautiful auditory effects on Earth: the sound made by the leaves of trees when wind blows through them?” The options were Apricity, Petrichor, Susurrus, and Eudaemonia.

“You want to know what’s a good sign?” Ken Jennings said. “Before the options came up, I thought, ‘It’s like suration or something before susurrus popped up. I have a really good feeling about C.” They went with susurrus after using their 50/50 Lifeline and got it right, winning the $1 million.

Only two other celebrities have won the $1 million on Millionaire — Chef David Chang with help from Mina Kimes and Ike Barinholtz with his father. The Jeopardy! host talked with TV Insider about his time on the game show, if it’s truly easier than Jeopardy!, and how he got partnered with Matt Damon. Jennings said at the beginning of his first episode that Millionaire was easier. See if he still feels the same way.

Disney/Christopher Willard

After playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire for the second time, do you still think that it is tougher than Jeopardy!?
I do. I guess you could say that we won the million, so clearly, it’s not a Jeopardy!-like crucible, and that’s true. Jeopardy! probably, objectively, has a lot of things that are harder about it, but the thing about Millionaire is it’s like you have to swing at every pitch. You cannot let a ball go by and say, ‘That’s not my pitch.’ You can’t miss a question. And you always are so aware of that. It’s like you’re teetering over an Indiana Jones death pit, because the next question could be it at any point. So it’s tense out there. I think Matt felt it too.

Do you think it was easier this time around with a partner?
Absolutely easier with a partner. It turned out to be easier that Jimmy knew the one we didn’t know. We had a lot of good Millionaire luck.

What made you pick Matt Damon over going with another Jeopardy! contestant?
I think you might have that backward. I think Matt Damon might have picked me. He might have been top of the call sheet. I want to say what had happened was that I happened to be at the same cancer fundraiser with Jimmy Kimmel, and he pigeonholed me right before he was about to go on stage, and said, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we got some real A-listers to go on Celebrity Millionaire? Because they knew that you would be their ringer.’ And I thought to myself, ‘No, that would not be funny. That would be very stressful for me.’ Because now the pressure is on me, and whatever A-lister signed up for this, assuming that I would hook them up and but what I said was, ‘Oh, that’s a great idea, Jimmy,’ and I just hoped he would forget about it, but unfortunately, he remembered, and I was super happy when Matt said yes, because he always struck me as a smart celebrity, right? He’s very smart in Rounders and The Martian, and Good Will Hunting. And I always just thought, ‘I bet that guy is secretly smart in real life.’ And look at this. It turned out he was, he is.

What was the dynamic like on set between the “rivals” Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel?
I’d seen them do that on TV so many times, and loved it, but for some reason, I had forgotten it was just gonna go on in person while I was trying to win on a game show. So I tried to get 15 questions right, and I’m very worried and stressed about this. And then these two are doing a Friar Club roast, which was great. It actually ended up kind of taking off the pressure, because I started really enjoying seeing it up close. They’re both super funny.

Disney/Christopher Willard

How would you say your studying habits were different between Millionaire and Jeopardy!? If you studied for a Millionaire at all?
Oh, I didn’t have time to study. What I did was I watched a lot of game tape. I watched celebrities playing Celebrity Millionaire. But that actually scared me more because I was like, ‘Oh, the questions are actually really legit.’ After the first handful, I watched a clip of Lisa Ann Walter and Rosie O’Donnell having to figure out which country has all five vowels once. And I’m watching this in the back of my car on the way to the airport to play Millionaire. And I’m thinking, this is very, very hard. And then Lisa Ann Walter just thinks about it for a minute. She’s like, ‘Oh, Mozambique.’ And first of all, way to go, Lisa Ann Walter of Abbott Elementary and Celebrity Jeopardy! fame. But also, I was thinking, ‘Oh, wow, I’m gonna wash out of this thing and be worse than some of the comedians.’ They don’t dumb down Celebrity Millionaire. We did get a kind of easy stack, but those were real questions. Some of them were tough.

Related

‘Jeopardy!’ Host Ken Jennings Addresses Leaving Show & Big Change He’d Like To Make

Going into the game, did you feel an added pressure because you had already played Millionaire before, and because you’re the Jeopardy! G.O.A.T?
Yeah, that’s the problem. That’s why I don’t go play bar trivia. It’s going to be big news when I lose on one of these shows. And the last time I bailed on Millionaire, I think after $100,000 I just thought, ‘Yeah, this is a tough show.’ One fact in the wrong place, just one clue you don’t know, and that’ll end you. Whereas on Jeopardy!, if you don’t know 20 of the clues, you might do just fine. So I really feel like I dodged a bullet, but there’s a saying, ‘I feel like a million bucks,’ and that was literally true. I have never felt that kind of relief, as when I realized, ‘Oh, this was really hard, but we got away with it.’”

One of your questions towards the end was the Steve Martin look-alike question. Did Sam Buttrey from Jeopardy! run through your head at all when you were reading those options?
Yeah, I’m reading the four names, and I’m thinking, ‘I know a real Steve Martin look-alike, and none of these people would win this contest if Sam Buttrey were there.’ And it turned out that I had actually, watched Bill Nye on local TV, and here in Seattle, when he was still just a sketch comic, and I really should have known that. But luckily, it’s better to be lucky than smart, right? What were the odds that Jimmy Kimmel also would have been a Seattle radio personality at the same time, and knew that one cold, just the luck of the draw, he saved our bacon.

When you saw the million-dollar question, you were saying that the answer was something with an ‘S.’ And so once you saw the answers come up, what went through your head when you were like, ‘I got this, and we’re going to win the million dollars’ because you basically knew the answer?
There’s a little game that it’s smart to play where, because they reveal the answers one of the time. So as soon as I saw the question, each time, I was trying to think, without seeing the choices, without being prejudiced by the choices, what would I say here? And when that question popped up, I thought, ‘I think there’s a word for this. I think it’s like serration.’ And then, as soon as a form of that word popped up. That was an amazing feeling of relief, because I didn’t really think, I thought we’d do well for Matt’s charity, but I did not think we were going to win the million, honestly, because I know the questions get very hard at the end.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Wednesdays, 8/7c, ABC