Jeopardy!’s Ken Jennings & Mayim Bialik’s most controversial moments revealed as rivals fight over permanent host gig
JEOPARDY! stars Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik have both gotten more backlash than fans may be clued in to.
Here are their SHOCKING controversial moments before a permanent host is picked.
Mayim, 46, is Jeopardy! this month after alum Ken, 47, had his prior three weeks at the helm and announced he’d be out for “months.”
Ken hosted Canadian champ Mattea Roach’s recent 23-game tear, while Mayim rode along with Philadelphia Uber driver Ryan Long’s 16-game streak that halted Monday.
But the permanent hosting slot is still on the board – and fans are buzzing over who will be chosen by the end of Season 38 in July 2022.
Neither host, however, has made choosing just one very easy.
Read more on Jeopardy!
Ken and Mayim began filling in for the legendary Alex Trebek in 2021 after his tragic 2020 passing, a fleet of Season 37 celebrity guest announcers – and Mike Richards.
Mike was named permanent host alone, but after a week (or one day of taping) had to step down due to misogynistic comments.
The late Alex had hosted since 1984, Art Fleming before that when the show aired during the day.
Both hosts have upped their looks – Ken debuted a slicked-back hairstyle and Mayim has unveiled suits aplenty – but indeed, neither has a perfectly manicuered past.
Most read in TV
KEN’S STREAK OF ‘OFFENSIVE’ TWEETS
Many fans prefer Ken as he famously won the most games of Jeopardy! in 2004 – including the Greatest of All Time Jeopardy! tournament back in January 2020.
The 74-game streak holder (the most ever) also has the most regular gameplay earnings – nearly $5million when he was just a software engineer – and a great rapport with Alex.
But Ken had to answer (not in the form of questions) for tweets he put out.
As he entered the running in 2021, and was being heavily considered solo host for good himself after Mike, fans found old tweets that caused a delay once more.
One 2014 tweet read: “Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair.”
Ken also tweeted about a terminally ill Star Wars fan who saw The Force Awakens before he died in 2015.
“It can’t be a good sign that every fan who has seen the new Star Wars movie died shortly thereafter,” he wrote.
Ken went on publicly appologize, but there were other shockers still on the board.
Ken also hosts – to this day – a podcast called Omnibus with “Bean Dad” John Roderick, which they started in 2017.
John went viral in 2021 for a now-deleted 23-tweet thread joking he made his hungry 9-year-old daughter spend six hours learning to use a can opener while he watched.
He said he saw it as a “teaching moment,” leading #BeanDad to trend throughout the day, and he deleted his account.
“Extremely jealous and annoyed that my podcast co-host is going to be a dictionary entry and I never will,” Ken then joke-tweeted.
In a second tweet, Jennings wrote, “If this reassures anyone, I personally know John to be (a) a loving and attentive dad who (b) tells heightened-for-effect stories about his own irascibility on like ten podcasts a week. This site is so dumb.”
But Ken’s partner in podcasting had racist tweets resurface himself.
“Every time I use a word like ‘gay’ or ‘reta**ed’ some gay ret**d reminds me those words are hurtful,” he tastelessly wrote in 2011 per The Wrap.
He also wrote “Jews ruin everybody’s fun,” and “The founders intended USA as white homeland.”
One Twitter user fumed recently, “Why exactly is Sony so dead set on shitty white men instead of asking … LeVar Burton to consider the job?”
Another lamented, “Doing a podcast with the white nationalist ‘bean dad’ maybe should be disqualifying too.”
WHAT IS: FAVORITISM?
Ken took a surprising host hiatus from Jeopardy! last month, tweeting: “I’m handing the keys back to the talented actor-producer-writer-director (!) Mayim Bialik for a few months. We are lucky to have her! I’ll be back before the end of the season.”
Leaving the day after Mattea – the 23-year-old gone-viral – lost, he had quite an on-stage fondness of her; fans felt it affected gameplay.
Whenever the septum-pierced, bespectacled Gen-Z player buzzed in correctly, Ken encouragingly replied, “good.”
When Mattea shared an off-set celebration from LA’s In-N-Out Burger on Twitter, Ken replied on Twitter while the show was airing.
Ken also would regularly open the show with Mattea-centric monologues in front of the new players – one by noting that she is Canadian, before listing other people, places, and things from the country.
“Mounties, moose, maple syrup, ketchup chips … northern lights, Niagra Falls, Celine Dion, Norm Macdonald… Alex Trebek” he vamped before the game had even started.
One fan noted: “What was with Kennings extended Canada-themed #Jeopardy intro?”
Another wrote, “It’s really annoying because Ken Jennings more than anyone should know his talking, his favoritism, all of it is unfair. What is this Mattea recap at the beginning of each show? And it’s getting longer and longer every time. WTF?”
Ken may score the beloved gig – which is said to pay $10M a year – but the openly Mormon Washington-born alum is no latter-day saint.
MAYIM ON-STAGE MAYHEM
On-screen, actress Mayim has arguably had a worse Season 38 than Ken.
She made an NSFW off-color adlib about marijuana use after a clue mentioned the drug, joking, “Joint committee, get it?”
“Won’t the #Jeopardy writers PLEASE think of the children watching, and their delicate ears that were just exposed to a cannabis reference?” one user fumed.
Mayim also seemed to misunderstand the legacy of the band Queen saying “Wayne’s World made them popular!” and regularly replies to contestant’s earnest Q&A with jokes.
The host bluntly said after the player’s story about autism testing, “Glad to hear spitting in a tube went better than taking blood,”
And during the same round in a different game – one said he was in a “fancy sports league” and Mayim curtly responded: “That’s so thrilling,” and moved on.
Mayim had another joke that flatlined before Ken returned for his recent stretch – she told a doctor he was “just an anesthesiologist, not a surgeon.”
Gameplay wise, one week – three-of-five games had Double Jeopardy clues still left on the board, as fans have noted she looks down at her cue cards nearly every clue.
“I like Mayim Bialik but she’s gotta pick up the pace on Jeopardy. That’s multiple shows now where they’ve run out of time with clues left on the board,” one tweeted.
“Mayim Bialik really slow rolls the ‘yes that is correct’. She takes a long pause while leaving everyone hanging. Contestants are like, weeeeeell….is my response correct or not??!” wrote another.
‘FAKE BRAIN PILLS’
Off-stage, Mayim faced huge backlash for her changing views on vaccines and for supporting shady suppliments.
When speaking to People in 2009, Mayin said “we are a non-vaccinating family.”
Last year she changed her tune and released a YouTube video telling viewers that she was going to get a vaccine for the coronavirus and flu.
“Now you might be saying, ‘Hey wait a second, Dr. Mayim Bialik, you don’t believe in vaccines. You’re one of those anti-vaxxers! I know it because I read it online,’ ” she joked, waving her hand dismissively. “Well folks, let’s finally talk about it.”
Mayim also faced backlash for doing commercials for a “fake brain supplement” per CT WatchDog called Neruiva.
“I don’t just play someone brainy on TV. I’m an actual neuroscientist. And I love the science behind Neuriva plus.”
She also said in an earlier ad, “Neuriva is backed by real science and vetted by a real neuroscientist: Me! I really am. Check your phone,” Mayim said on-screen.
“Don’t trust your brain to any old supplement — trust the one backed by America’s favorite neuroscientist. Again, that’s me!”
Bloomberg Law reported Neuriva was part of a false advertising class action settlement and had to stop saying it was “backed by science” but just “tested” to help with things like memory.
A Psychology Today article from 2020 called Neuriva “snake oil” and “pseudoscience nonsense.”
The supplements are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, per Being Patient.
On Reddit, one fan fumed on the Neuroscientist-turned actress’ commercials, “I can’t stand seeing Mayim Bialik, an ‘Actual Neuroscientist
’, use her academic credentials to shill non-clinically-proven brain supplements.”
Another wrote, “Agreed. How can she need money that badly? She’s been in TWO major hit tv shows. When is enough enough?”
A third wrote, “That’s scary.”
WHO WILL SCORE THE GIG?
Many Jeopardy! fans regularly tweet #hirebuzzy, referring to alum Buzzy Cohen, who co-hosts The Chase which Ken also formerly hosted – he is not known to have such controversies.
As one fan tweeted recently between the final two, “I actually like both Ken and Mayim, so that’s that, at least for me,” though one more replied that the 74-game and Greatest of All Time winner, given his resume, is still a “better fit for the show” between them.
One clue Ken will get it is Mayim’s sitcom Call Me Kat was renewed and not for mid-season.
Another Reddit user put together other clues from various sources that seemed to point to the permanent hosting gig being announced “soon.”
On a recent installment of his podcast Ken revealed he has been scheduled for tapings in June.
Jeopardy! fans assumed he might be hosting episodes for the upcoming fall – as the show pre-tapes its seasons.
At the beginning of June, Mark Gaberman, a writer on the ABC show also announced he will be returning to the show.
Read More On The Sun
Mark tweeted: “I’m happy to report I just signed my contract for another year of Jeopardy. Beyond grateful.”
Jeopardy! followers speculated that the contract of the permanent host might be nearing its “final stages,” as well – for better or worse.
We pay for your stories!
Do you have a story for The US Sun team?
Email us at exclusive@the-sun.com or call 212 416 4552. Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheSunUS and follow us from our main Twitter account at @TheSunUS