#‘Jeopardy!’ Winners Bow Out of Tournament of Champions Due to Writers Strike
The annual Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions may be down a few champions.
Several big winners from the 2022-23 season say they won’t take part in the tournament while the writers strike is ongoing. Jeopardy! employs Writers Guild of America members, and the syndicated game show is planning to rely on material from prior seasons (39 years’ worth) as it begins taping shows for the 2023-24 season, sources told The Hollywood Reporter. The Tournament of Champions usually tapes in late August and September.
Ray Lalonde, a TV set builder and painter from Toronto who won $386,400 over 13 games last season, wrote in a post on the Jeopardy! Reddit forum that he was declining his Tournament of Champions invitation because he doesn’t want to cross WGA picket lines: “I am and will always be grateful for the experience I had on the show and the opportunity to participate in the TOC is beyond a dream come true for me. That being said, I believe that the show’s writers are a vital part of the show and they are justified in taking their job action to secure a fair contract for themselves and their fellow WGA members. As a supporter of the trade union movement, a union member’s son and a proud union member myself I have informed the show’s producers that if the strike remains unresolved I will not cross a picket line to play in the tournament of champions.”
A number of other big winners from last season — Chris Pannullo, Hannah Wilson, Ben Chan, Troy Meyer, Ben Goldstein, Luigi de Guzman and Suresh Krishnan — replied to Lalonde’s post or posted elsewhere on social media saying they would join him in declining to take part. Celebrity Jeopardy! winner Ike Barinholtz was also slated to be in the Tournament of Champions but as a WGA member will not take part in a struck production. Pannullo, Lalonde, Chan and Wilson had the four highest total winnings on Jeopardy! in 2022-23.
THR has asked Jeopardy! producer Sony Pictures TV for comment and will update this story with any reply.
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