‘Jeopardy!’ Star Amy Schneider Addresses Her ‘Checkered Sexual Past’ & Drug Use
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Jeopardy! super-champ Amy Schneider is set to tell all about her “checkered sexual history,” drug use and remarkable journey. The beloved contestant has been penning her memoirs, and admits to having “messiness in my life.” Her upcoming book, In the Form of a Question, is described as an “inspirational and bold memoir from the most successful woman ever to compete on Jeopardy!”
Speaking about the book on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast, the 2022 Tournament of Champions winner said, “I feel pretty proud of it. I really enjoyed the process of writing it. My goal is that I’m hoping this does well enough that people want to read another one from me.”
Schneider said she had two main motivations for writing the memoir, the first one being based on people always asking her, ‘How do you know all that stuff?’ She said she wanted to reflect on that and “living a curious life” and how it led to her Jeopardy! success.
After winning 40 consecutive games on the show from November 2021 to January 2022, Schneider went on to compete and win the 2022 Tournament of Champions, becoming the first transgender contestant to participate in a TOC. But she explained how she didn’t want her book to just be about her successes.
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“As I was writing it, something else that I was sort of realizing was my being on Jeopardy meant a lot to a lot of people, in the trans community in particular, and I’m very grateful for that and conscious of that,” she shared. “But I also had this feeling of what people saw of me on Jeopardy is a small part of me and the most relatable, family-friendly, approachable part of me.”
She continued, “I worried that seeing just the good in my life and seeing just the parts that are easiest to connect to might give people the impression that when they come across other trans people out in the world who are less approachable, who have more messiness in their life, that I could be used as an excuse to write other trans people off.”
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“So I wanted to talk about the fact that I have had messiness in my life,” the super-champ added. “I, like many trans people, have done things with drug use. I’ve had a checkered sexual history and all these sorts of things. I wanted to show that none of that is incompatible with the Jeopardy! champion that you’ve seen. And so none of that is a reason to write anybody off.”
Schneider’s book, In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life, will be released on October 3.
