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Mike Richards
2021 Daytime Emmy Awards via Getty Images
first Danger! The producer who was fired after one day as the new TV game show host, in fallout from hateful comments he had made years earlier, opens up about his experience and reveals how some of the top potential guest hosts tried out to replace Alex Trebek. he came from unexpected professional backgrounds and could have altered the tone of the show.
Mike Richards had a career as a game show producer, working in major roles on shows including The price is good and Let’s make a Deal, before being chosen for the coveted hosting job on a quiz show Danger! following the death of beloved host Alex Trebek in 2020 from pancreatic cancer. In a new interview with People Reflecting on that time period, Richards shared some details of the many famous people who auditioned for or guest hosted the popular late-night game show as producers searched for a suitable replacement for Trebek, while he was mourned behind the scenes and among fans of the whole country. .
“We could find out if they liked a Katie Couric guy, or maybe Anderson Cooper or Mayim Bialik,” Richards says of the process that ultimately led to him being named the new host. He shared that Couric stood out as a host she could reshape Danger! as fans have known him for decades.
“The show had a different look with Katie Couric,” he told the magazine. “She was very impressed by everyone’s knowledge. “I always wondered if it was a missed opportunity to restart the show with her, a completely different host.”
Surprisingly, Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers was also high on their list of potential hosts for the show.
“Aaron Rodgers was definitely the most prepared,” Richards said. “I was impressed by that, the intensity with which he prepared, and he was very kind to all the staff members.
But could the host of Danger!a difficult job that he says requires a unique talent that Trebek definitely shared with the public every night of the week, will he divide it with the great responsibilities of the NFL?
“I was like, ‘How are you going to figure this out with football scheduling?’ He said, ‘You’ll find out!'”
Previous on-air jobs Richards had dabbled in as she rose through the ranks in television production included stints on the dating series. The beauty and the geekpresenting New Year’s Eve Rocking Eve in 2005, and the show million dollar pyramidled to his name being discarded for high profile Danger! Job. The executive producer of the popular quiz show and its late-night sequel, Wheel of Fortune, He says he was “more surprised than anyone” when a panel selected him for the concert in August 2021. However, the audience was not satisfied.
“Everyone was very angry because it seemed like I had walked into a room and picked myself,” he said. People. “And that’s not what happens on television, but I understood that those were appearances.”
That anger turned into scrutiny of Richards’ past and after hosting the show for one day, he was fired. The Anti-Defamation League discovered derogatory comments he had made on a podcast, while it emerged that he was also involved in cases of wrongful termination and discrimination of models that appeared on The price is good. Richards said People it had been suggested that he was being sued personally for sexual harassment; This was not true and he was eventually dropped from the lawsuit.
Other half-truths were written about him, he claims, as he quickly became a national pariah.
“Everyone was like, ‘Oh, he’s a horrible person,'” he says, adding, “It was the price you pay for getting caught up in the zeitgeist at a very inopportune time.”
Richards’ subsequent retirement from public life and television work, which he spent largely with his family (whom he claims did not escape harassment) while working on new game show concepts, is now coming to fruition. its end when it calls for open discussions. of controversial topics about the rapid cancellation of people like the one he experienced two years ago.
“We can all disagree on a lot of things,” he said. People. “We can disagree about politics, we can disagree about who hosts J.pardia! We may not agree that we like a final. Danger! clue. And we should do it. But I felt like there was a rush to judgment and a lot of people were happy to say, ‘I got you.'”
Danger! It is now hosted by Ken Jennings, the show’s highest-earning American contestant. Actor Mayim Bialik, who co-hosted with Jennings following Richards’ brief stay on the podium, left the show amid the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes.