Getting real. While Jeopardy! is currently airing its iconic special, The Greatest of All Time, host Alex Trebek doesn’t feel he was at his greatest when he filmed the special with contestants Brad Rutter, Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer.
“Some days are better than others. My resistance is lower than most of you, of course, because of the treatments I’ve been having [and] the chemotherapy,” the host, 79, told reporters at the Television Critics’ Association’s winter press tour on Wednesday, January 8.
He also revealed that he’s suffering from a bad cold for the second time in the last two months.
“They’ve got me off one of my chemo drugs that was killing me,” he shared, adding that he has another test tomorrow. “I have good days and bad days.”
He explained that after his wife watched the Jeopardy: The Greatest of All Time tournament tapes, he asked if she saw anything out of the ordinary. “I didn’t notice anything at all,” she told him. He then revealed he had noticed something.
“I seemed a little slower in the ad-lib portions. I could still deliver the clues, but I feel that I was not having one of my best weeks,” he shared.
Trebek, who has hosted the trivia show since 1984, revealed in March that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
During a recent special, What Is Jeopardy!? Alex Trebek and America’s Most Popular Quiz Show, Trebek revealed that he has already been thinking about when his time as host will end.
“It will be a significant moment,” he told host Michael Strahan during the January 3, special. “I’ve kind of, in my mind, rehearsed it already, and what I would do on that day is tell the director, ‘Time the show down to leave me 30 seconds at the end. That’s all I want.’”
He also already knows what he wants to leave the audience with on his last broadcast: “I will say my goodbyes and I will tell people: ‘Don’t ask me who’s going to replace me because I have no say whatsoever. But I’m sure that if you give them the same love and attention and respect that you have shown me, then they will be a success and the show will continue being a success. And until we meet again, God bless you and goodbye.’”
He noted on Wednesday, “I don’t foresee that 30-second moment coming up in the near future,” reassuring reporters he had no plans yet for retirement.
Jeopardy: Greatest of All Time continues on ABC Wednesday, January 7, at 8 p.m. ET.
