‘Jeopardy!’ Champion Chris D’Angelo Speaks Out About Show After Dramatic Exit

Chris D’Angelo won eight games on Jeopardy! and nearly $200,0000 until he was beaten by Peter McFerrin in a dramatic game on June 1. Now, the champion is speaking out about his time on the show, and more.

The content manager, from Washington, D.C., told DC Theater Arts that he received the call to be on the game show when he was rehearsing for a play. “I was in rehearsal for Emma at St. Mark’s Players, and my phone rang with an unknown number,” he told the outlet.

D’Angelo assumed the call was spam and let it go to voicemail. During a break from rehearsal, he saw the word “Jeopardy!” in the voicemail transcript and immediately excused himself. “So I’m standing in an Episcopalian church, and I start swearing, ‘Oh my God!’ and had to step out and call [the producer] back,” D’Angelo laughed. “She actually offered me a date that was in the run of Emma, between the first and second weekend. I had to say, I really can’t fly to LA and then fly back and do the show, but of course I want to do this!”

Jeopardy! producers accommodated his request to be in Emma, and he flew out to California the day after the production ended. He couldn’t give up the dream he had had since 2005, when he started to audition for Jeopardy!. He was invited to an in-person audition back then, but didn’t make it further.

“I spent most of my adult life — pretty much all of it — hoping that Jeopardy! would call me!” he said.

His love and experience in theater helped him during his Jeopardy! run. He shared that being in the studio felt a lot like being on a stage.

“You’re playing a game, the game board’s off to your right, and the cameras are off to your left. You can’t see them. So what you’re feeling is 120 people in the audience watching you, and then maybe 40 crew. You’ve got this energy flow from the audience just like you do on stage,” D’Angelo told the outlet.

“I think that [theater] was the best thing I could do to prepare to be on Jeopardy!, because after 30 years of being on stage, I didn’t get overawed by being in front of people. If I thought about the millions of people who were going to be watching, I might have been, but if I could keep it in the room, it’s really helpful.”

“Just like learning your lines, you have all this information in your head, and you have to get to it in the right time, at the right place, in the right way based on what someone else does. Plenty of clues up there; if you asked me straight up, ‘What is this thing?’ I might not be able to get it, but there’s information in how they write the clue that then unlocks a different piece of information in your head,” he went on.

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But, the Jeopardy! competition wasn’t cutthroat at all. D’Angelo shared what surprised him about the show.

“What really surprised me was the incredibly nice welcoming community vibe of the place. Both the people who work there and the people who are on the show. Yes, you want to win, [but] what really surprised me was that it wasn’t cutthroat competition,” he said. D’Angelo said that the contestant group bonded over lunch, much like the theater community does,” he told DC Theater Arts.

Although his reign on Jeopardy! is over for now, D’Angelo will return for the Tournament of Champions.

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