It centered on the discrimination and harassment she said she experienced after becoming pregnant. One suit was filed in 2010 by Brandi Cochran, who worked as a model on the show. Richards was originally named as a defendant in one of those complaints, but was dismissed from the suit before it settled. The lawsuits, two of which were settled out of court, focused on the mistreatment of female employees by Price’s male leadership, including Richards. In recent weeks, questions about Richards have only intensified, with multiple lawsuits dating to his time as EP of The Price Is Right gaining attention after an early-August report that Richards was in advanced negotiations to secure the Jeopardy! host job. Says a former Deal employee who was at the show during Richards’s tenure: “When I worked there, it just seemed to be something everyone knew.” Interviews with sources from Sony, Jeopardy!, and previous shows Richards has worked on, including The Price Is Right and Let’s Make a Deal, paint a picture of a showrunner who could be exclusionary and dismissive of longtime show employees-as well as someone who wasn’t shy about wanting to move in front of the camera. Given that he also was a candidate to host The Price Is Right, it looks like Richards just wanted to host a game show, any game show.”Ĭoncerns about Richards extend to the Jeopardy! staff, with a source close to the show telling The Ringer that employees were blindsided by Sony’s announcement and multiple sources describing how staff morale has deteriorated under Richards’s watch as EP. “Rodgers and Burton were clear about how important Jeopardy! was to them personally. “It’s unfortunate that guest hosts like Aaron Rodgers and LeVar Burton really put themselves out there in terms of openly wanting the job and for Rodgers in particular, discussing the extraordinary amount of effort to which he went to prepare for his turn, when it’s not clear anyone besides Richards ever had a real chance at the main role,” says Kristin Sausville, who won five games on Jeopardy! in 2015. (Last week, The New York Times reported that Richards “ moved aside after he emerged as a candidate.”) And while some disappointment was probably inevitable at the end of a guest host rotation that featured names ranging from LeVar Burton and Aaron Rodgers to Robin Roberts and Savannah Guthrie, the decision to promote Richards-an internal candidate who was relatively unknown to the general public-has sparked more backlash than the show might have anticipated. Richards’s selection has been met with criticism by Jeopardy! fans and former contestants alike, many of whom have questioned the validity of a prolonged and high-profile audition process that ended with the ascension of someone once tasked with leading it. He alone will fill the role long held by Alex Trebek. Actress Mayim Bialik will host prime-time tournaments, but the nightly job belongs to Richards. On August 11, parent studio Sony Pictures Television announced that the 46-year-old will become the show’s new permanent host, just 15 months after he was named its executive producer. Now, though, Richards has gotten on Jeopardy!, albeit on the other side of the stage. I don’t have that kind of mind.” Later in the episode, after Jennings joined, Richards went further: “If I had gotten on Jeopardy!-well, I never would have gotten on Jeopardy!, let’s be square,” he said. “It doesn’t even matter if it’s a specific area I should know. “See, what I am is horrible at all trivia,” Richards said. Richards, meanwhile, was backstage at The Price Is Right, the show he had joined as a co–executive producer five years earlier, and where that May he had launched a podcast called The Randumb Show, which was promoted to listeners as a look behind the scenes at Price.īefore he called Jennings to record a segment on the podcast, Richards put a question to his cohost. One day in the fall of 2013, Mike Richards called Ken Jennings.Īt the time, Jennings was nearly a decade removed from the 74-game Jeopardy! winning streak that had made him a household name. Update, August 20: Mike Richards has stepped down as the host of Jeopardy! According to a statement provided by Sony, the studio “will now resume the search for a permanent syndicated host.”
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