I’ve been a Jeopardy superfan for years, and one of the things I really enjoy is when the show occasionally brings in a celebrity guest to introduce a category. This summer, they did so with Gerard Butler, Nico Parker and Mason Thames from the How To Train Your Dragon cast. The category was about Viking culture and would have been tough for me as a contestant, but as it turns out, filming for the show isn’t super easy, either.
It was a whirlwind summer for Nico Parker and Mason Thames, who have been busy promoting How To Train Your Dragon across the globe. As part of this whirlwind tour, I spoke with the two actors about some of their other fun side gigs, and of course I had to know about what it was like filming for the long-running game show. Turns out, it was more “difficult” than one might expect.
We did when we had some content days in LA and one of the things that we did was Jeopardy! But it was actually really difficult because half of the words are really small and quite difficult, and I remember we were reading off a teleprompter and I’m like, ‘I have no idea what I’m saying.’
Nico said the teleprompter and the nature of the questions didn’t make it the most comfortable gig, but her rambunctious co-star didn’t help. Parker said he was trying to prank her and get her to mess up, and his strategy worked.
It was [also] very stressful. Mason was off camera staring at me while I did it, so I kept messing it up. It was so embarrassing.
Mason also jokingly told CinemaBlend he “kept throwing things at her” to get her off her a-game.
You can’t tell in the end result. Nico actually got to ask two questions for Jeopardy! while Mason asked one, though both are very professional. Gerard Butler has a funny moment where he introduces the category and host Ken Jennings joked that he “can’t compete with that accent,” too. And some of the answers are quite hard. I, for one, would never have gotten “Île de la Cité.”
I’d always wondered how Jeopardy! filmed those fun spots with actors, and it was interesting to find out they’d just schedule the filming in the middle of a normal press day. I’m still left wondering how the game show decides what movie and TV categories to highlight and what actors should be involved. But that’s a question for the writing staff.
Stay tuned!
