Jeopardy! phenomenon Amy Schneider opened up to Good Morning America Monday about her experience on the quiz show.
Schneider, who is currently tied with Matt Amodio with the second-longest winning streak in Jeopardy! history, told George Stephanopoulos, “I never expected to do this well.”
She added the “main secret” of her success is “just being curious and spending my life learning a lot of stuff.” That said, Schneider was once voted by classmates as, “most likely to be on Jeopardy!”
“I mean, I was good in school. I got good grades, I won the spelling bee. So yeah, I definitely — I did expect to be on Jeopardy! and to do all right, just never expected to do it quite this well,” she confessed.
Schneider admitted she had an interesting way of getting ready for the game show’s “buzzer,” which contestants use to offer their answers to the hosts. “I practiced at home with a ball-point pen,” she said.
However, Schneider said, “that first game, it wasn’t quite working as well as it needed to.” She added, “For whatever reason I decided to throw that out and stop thinking about it and purely try to go on instinct…”
One other thing Schneider wasn’t prepared for? Fame, she told Stephanopoulos. “There’s a bit of a gap between the taping and the airing, so I did have some time to like get used to the idea,” she laughed. “I didn’t really know what it would be or how famous is Jeopardy! famous. So it’s been a lot, but it’s mostly been just really fun.”
Schneider added, “I think that the best part for me has been being on TV, you know, as my true self, expressing myself and representing the entire community of trans people and … just being, you know, a smart, confident woman and doing something super normal like being on Jeopardy!”
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