Alex Trebek never really wanted to write a memoir. The
Jeopardy! host reveals as much in the forward of his new book,
The Answer Is…:Reflections on My Life, writing that he never thought he was actually interesting enough to merit one. That all changed when he announced he was battling Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in March 2019, leading to an outpouring of support from fans and a real moment of reflection for him.“I want people to know a little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year,” he writes,
according to the Washington Post. “It’s an aperçu of Alex Trebek, human being. What is he like? What has he done? How did he screw up? Things like that.” As it turns out, Trebek has done a lot over his 36-year
Jeopardy! career, not to mention a ton of other things before that. From accidentally eating hash brownies at a Malibu party to meeting the Queen, coaching kids' sports with Bryan Cranston to his surprise half-brother and what he really thinks of Will Ferrell’s impression of him, here are some interesting tidbits from the memoir.
That time he accidentally ate hash browniesMost fans know that Trebek got his start in Canadian television, but when he moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s, he realized that people there lived a bit of a different lifestyle. Or at least, the people at one particular party that he went to did. The host reveals that drugs were never really his thing (and his rare drink of choice is a simple chardonnay), but he did have a pretty innocent and hilarious experience with some brownies at a party shortly after going south.[video_embed id='1998873']RELATED: Alex Trebek announces memoir and provides fans a health update[/video_embed]"The hosts said, 'Go ahead, help yourself.' I had four or five of them,” he recalls after a plate of brownies caught his eye. “I did not realize they were hash brownies. Mr. Naive here. The party was on a Friday night. The drugs knocked me out so much I spent the weekend laid out in their guest bedroom and didn't leave their home until Monday morning. Talk about embarrassment."
A surprise half-brotherIn the memoir, Trebek naturally opens up about his beginnings, which include being born in a shack behind his grandparents’ home in Sudbury, Ont. and witnessing his mom, uncle and cousin being diagnosed with tuberculosis at the same time before he was 10 years old. (The trio were sent to the sanitarium in Gravenhurst, Ont. and he remembers visiting his mom there "maybe once.") He also spends time outlining his parents’ split, when his mom moved to Detroit to live. "Unbeknownst to me, she was pregnant," he writes. Apparently she had gotten together with a man shortly before leaving and that guy had no desire to stay with her. So she gave the baby boy up for adoption after she left. "I didn't know I had a half-brother until shortly after I started hosting
Jeopardy!,” he adds. “He and I have communicated over the years, but we are not close."
On meeting the QueenTrebek’s encounter with the monarch took place all the way back in 1967, when she and Prince Charles were in Canada to celebrate the centennial year. Trebek had been tapped to host a Parliament Hill special and after the show everyone lined up to meet the couple. As host, Trebek was last.[video_embed id='1997218']RELATED: Alex Trebek says he is 'feeling great' in health update[/video_embed]“The Queen got to me and said, 'Good show. Please tell me your name, and where you are from.' And as I began answering her, I couldn't help but notice that she glanced over her shoulder, just for a second, to see where Prince Philip was,"
he writes as per
E! News. "Now, normally in public the Queen has Prince Philip one or two steps behind her, and she will not leave the stage until he is accompanying her. Only this time he wasn't one or two steps behind. He had paused fifty feet back and was chatting up the Kalev Estonian gymnasts—a group of twenty-year-old blond girls in electric-blue leotards,” he continues.“So the Queen was stuck talking to me for four or five minutes. You're not supposed to lead the conversation with the Queen. She loved horses, and once she found out I was hosting the Canadian Triple Crown of racing, we spent much of our discussion on that. Finally, after several minutes of conversation, Prince Philip showed up and said, 'Good show,' shook my hand, and off they went." Trebek goes on to write that the next day he was hosting another show that involved the Queen, and so when he lined up to greet her again he expected that she’d be a little less formal. "And when she got to me, she said, 'Good show. Please tell me your name, and where you are from,'" he reveals.
On celebrity connectionsBeing the host of a beloved series for 36 years is bound to lead to an impersonation or two. And while Trebek doesn’t mind Will Ferrell’s now-famous
Saturday Night Live impression, he says that there’s someone who actually does it better: Eugene Levy. “It was a lot of fun, but to be honest, my favourite impersonation of me would be the one done by Eugene Levy on
SCTV," he writes. "They did a
marvelous parody of
Reach for the Top called
High Q. Eugene played me. He looked more the part than Will did."Ferrell and Levy aren’t the only celebs Trebek spills on in the book. He also recalls a letter he framed from Frank Sinatra that the crooner sent after
Jeopardy! hosted a category on him, and he opened up about which celebrity contestants he thinks has the chops to actually make it on the real version of the show. "Usually they come from the news media. Those folks have a good grasp of current events. The actors Michael McKean and Jodie Foster are two other fierce competitors who come to mind," he writes. "Other celebrities who I feel could definitely compete…would have to include Aaron Rodgers, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Anderson Cooper, Andy Richter and Joshua Malina."As for filming the show itself? Trebek reveals that he only works two, 11-hour days a week. That actually gives him a ton of free time. "It's not difficult because I only tape
Jeopardy! two days a week. A total of forty-six days a year,” he writes. “I'm not exactly overworked… Bryan Cranston and I helped out as assistant coaches” on their kids’ sporting teams.
On the futureWhile Trebek gets playful about his health in some chapters of the book (he reveals his breakfast of choice for years was a Snickers and a Diet Coke), he does open up about his
journey with cancer. He says he doesn’t like the terms “battling” or “fighting” and instead refers to it as simple biology. “I still believe in the will to live. I believe in positivity. I believe in optimism. I believe in hope, and I certainly believe in the power of prayer," he writes, adding that his current course of treatment is it for him. "I'm going to stick with this current protocol, then that's it. If it doesn't work I'll probably stop treatment." Naturally his family didn’t love to hear that, and the 80-year-old reveals that telling them, "wasn't an easy conversation.”One thing he makes clear is that he knows the is inevitable and he'll look back with his head held high. "One thing they're not going to say at my funeral as part of the eulogy is ‘He was taken from us too soon.' I'm about to turn eighty. I've lived a good, full life, and I'm nearing the end of it. I know that," he writes, adding that dying during the current coronavirus pandemic might not be the worst thing. "I'll be perfectly content if that's how my story ends: sitting on the swing with the woman I love, my soul mate, and our two wonderful children nearby."[video_embed id='1999409']BEFORE YOU GO: 'The D Cut' celebrates inclusion and acceptance[/video_embed]
