Gabbie Kim’s experience as a “Jeopardy!” contestant was both exactly what she always hoped it would be and absolutely nothing like she could have ever fathomed.
The 29-year-old Greenfield resident, doula and mother of two began her “Jeopardy!” journey in 2019. Her appearances kept getting delayed due to the pandemic and her pregnancy limiting her ability to travel. By the time she was finally invited out to Los Angeles to tape an episode in August 2021, the longtime “Jeopardy!” fan and trivia buff was more than ready to go.
The episode happened to be the season 38 premiere of “Jeopardy!” that aired Monday night on NBC. The long wait to get there not only caused her to inadvertently become another victim of Matt Amodio’s 19-game winning streak, but she also happens to be one of the few contestants who can say they were in an episode with Mike Richards as host before resigning amid widespread backlash sparked by sexist and demeaning comments he had previously made.
“It was nothing like I expected, because I didn’t expect to go up with a host who would then be gone the next day. And I didn’t expect to go up against an 18-day champion way back when this process started,” Kim told the Post-Gazette. “Now it seems like, ‘Oh, wow. All these delays led up to an interesting confluence of events.’
“At the same time, it was everything I wanted in the sense I got to stand up on that stage, acquit myself well and meet a bunch of fellow contestants with who I now have a lively group chat. What else can you ask for?”
As someone who has spent most of her life “collecting almost random information,” Kim naturally became a regular “Jeopardy!” viewer as a teenager and always dreamed of appearing on the show. So, she took the online test. A few months after her second attempt, she was asked to go to an in-person audition in Columbus, Ohio.
After the audition, Kim was put in a contestant pool and told that she could be summoned to tape an episode any time in the next 18 months. She got a call at the beginning of March 2020 for an April, 1, 2020, taping that was later postponed because of the pandemic. Once production on “Jeopardy!” restarted, it became tough to reschedule the appearance because she was 6 months pregnant and couldn’t fly across the country.
She was then asked in September 2020 to come in for an October 2020 taping that was abruptly canceled because then-host Alex Trebek’s health had taken a turn for the worse. Trebek died soon after, and Kim’s “Jeopardy!” experience was pushed back yet again to August — the “one and only day” that Richards was the show’s host before an article by The Ringer’s Clair McNear revealed offensive comments he made on a podcast several years ago.
That article appeared a day before Kim’s “Jeopardy!” taping. She said was aware of it during filming but hadn’t gotten a chance to read it yet.
“I think that if I had read the Ringer article, I would have been maybe a bit distracted while I was playing,” she said. “Not super consciously, but you become aware of some shift that’s going to be happening in this environment. I’m glad I had only heard the whispers of it, essentially.”
It was tough for Kim to get a read on Richards since the contestants don’t have much interaction with the host outside gameplay, but she said he “seemed very focused on trying to do a good job.” Watching the episode with him as host was surreal for Kim, but the silver lining was that she and the other contestants that day “were so bonded by the sheer absurdity of the event we just went through.”
Kim said “Jeopardy!” required a negative COVID-19 test 48 hours before she flew out and another 24 hours in advance of her taping day. Contestants were provided with fresh KN95 masks and tiny bottles of hand sanitizer. There was a COVID compliance officer on set making sure everyone maintained social distancing and kept masks on at all times, except when they were on camera.
“They take it very seriously, which I appreciated as a mom of two kids who can’t get vaccinated yet,” Kim said.
She knew there was “a pretty high possibility” that she would have to go up against Amodio.
“I kind of felt peaceful because he is so good that I was almost like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to do my best. I probably don’t have a great shot at winning,’” she said. “So the pressure was off in a way, and I was more free to enjoy myself playing the game. I feel proud of how I represented myself. I was up against a very worthy opponent, and I did my best.”
Amodio ran away with the game pretty early, though Kim and fellow contestant Amde Mengistu beat him on a few occasions. The only regret Kim has about her performance was a question about pop star Alanis Morissette that she was so excited to answer that she buzzed in early, which temporarily locked her out of answering it.
She wound up with $8,999 in winnings, $1,999 of which she earned by correctly answering the Final Jeopardy question. In retrospect, she “would choose a different strategy” for how much money she bet on that answer, but “it worked out fine, though.”
Overall, the whole saga is something Kim will always be able to hold onto, including the training she did with her husband that she categorized as “romantic in a dorky way.” She is also grateful that she got to pay tribute to her favorite video game, “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” which she logged 710 hours on during both her pregnancies.
“It was definitely surreal to see me in what feels like it’s going to be one of the lost episodes of ‘Jeopardy!’ during that infamous week,” she said. “It seemed so anticlimactic to watch it because there’s nothing dramatic about his presence on that show. But it was fun to watch me!”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: September 14, 2021, 4:29 p.m.
