Ken Jennings Reveals Why ‘Celebrity Jeopardy!’ Opted To Do All-Stars After Just 3 Seasons

Ken Jennings is getting candid! The Celebrity Jeopardy! host opened up about why the spinoff game show chose to bring back previous contestants after only three seasons.

For Season 4, Celebrity Jeopardy! chose to do an All-Star season. They brought back the past three winners — Ike Barinholtz, Lisa Ann Walter, and W. Kamau Bell, along with 18 other past contestants — Margaret Cho, Macaulay Culkin, Rachel Dratch, Mark Duplass, Sean Gunn, Mina Kimes, Cynthia Nixon, Katie Nolan, Patton Oswalt, Andy Richter, Mo Rocca, Ray Romano, Tim Simons, Mira Sorvino, Robin Thede, Jackie Tohn, Steven Weber, and Roy Wood Jr. These celebrities compete against each other until one comes out victorious and wins $1 million for their chosen charity.

Typically, shows do an All-Star season down the road after a handful of seasons, so they have more contestants to pick from. So why did Jeopardy! choose to do an All-Star season now? Ken Jennings weighed in.

“That’s above my pay grade,” he told CinemaBlend. “Candidly, it’s very hard to cast Celebrity Jeopardy! All Stars. It’s not Celebrity Wheel [of Fortune]. We can’t just invite everybody who thinks it would be fun.”

“You actually have to be legitimately good at Jeopardy!, and that means trying to find a crop of celebrities every year who have mentioned their Jeopardy! fandom in an interview, or who looks good in glasses, or whatever it is. [Laughs].”

“And in this case, we knew we had a lot of great players from the past three years, and we thought this way, no question marks. Everybody here is a pro. You’re going to see very high-level Celebrity Jeopardy! play,” Jennings ended.

Although there was no new episode on April 3, Celebrity Jeopardy! will air a new episode this Friday, April 10.

So far, three celebrities have won the Quarterfinals and made it through to the Semifinals — Nolan, Weber, and Gunn. Those celebrities, along with three other Quarterfinal winners, will face off against the previous seasons’ winners in the Semifinals.

The last two quarterfinal games will air on April 10 and 17 before the show takes a break again on the 24th. Then, the semifinals begin in May.

Celebrity Jeopardy!: All-Stars, Fridays, 8/7c, ABC, stream next day on Hulu