‘Jeopardy!’ Host Mike Richards Quits After Making Appalling Comments About Women, Jews & More In Resurfaced Audio
Alex Trebek's legacy deserves better.
JEOPARDY PRODUCTIONS, INC. Mike Richards — the new host of "Jeopardy! — has quit after facing backlash after resurfaced podcast clips and a lawsuit.
Richards sparked outrage over his sexist, antisemitic, fatphobic, and maybe racist past before his resignation.
Now, he will not take on his role as host but will remain on the show as an executive producer.
What did Mike Richards say? Details of 'Jeopardy' host's offensive comments.
Richards didn't leave anyone out in his alleged comments and actions that target women, people with disabilities and Jewish people.
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Richards is accused of sexism on 'The Price Is Right.'
In 2010, Shane Stirling and Brandi Sherwood Cochran — who worked on 'The Price Is Right' with Richards — named the then-executive producer in lawsuits.
The women claim. they were discriminated against while pregnant. Cochran, a model for the show, said that she tried to delay having a child after seeing producers harass two of the models who got pregnant and firing another.
Once she told Richards about her pregnancy, he allegedly said: “Twins? Are you serious? … You’re serious?” Later he allegedly implied that had he known of her pregnancy earlier he would have just fired her.
She claimed Richards insisted the women on the show wear short skirts.
“Richards decided that the models’ skirts should be shorter and said that he liked the models to look as if they were going out on a date,” she said. “At his suggestion, models wore bikinis on the show more frequently.”
After losing one of the twins and taking time off to care for her other premature baby, Cochran says her contract was terminated.
Cochran won the lawsuit for $8.5 million — a ruling which was overturned due to a legal technicality and settled privately.
Richards made many sexist comments on his podcast 'The Randumb Show.'
But Richards’ history doesn’t stop there. On The Randumb Show, which ran from 2013 to 2017, he made many awful comments about a multitude of people.
In one episode of the show, Richards discusses his co-host and former assistant, Beth Triffon, job as a model working at the CES. Richards dubbs her a “booth ho,” a “booth slut,” and a “boothstitute.”
In another episode with Triffon, Richards comments on a picture of her and her friends, saying they looked “really frumpy and overweight” in the shot. “They all look terrible in the picture … they look fat and not good in the picture.”
“It’s so funny because no one’s overweight,” she replied, resulting in Richards’ continuing to spout his opinion on how bad they looked.
Richards reportedly made ableist and antisemetic comments.
Richards has also reportedly “used the derogatory word for little people and a derogatory term for the mentally disabled” at different points.
In another episode where the subject of big noses were brought up, Richards said, “Ixnay on the ose-nay. She’s not an ew-Jay.” But wait, there’s more.
When Triffon, still co-hosting, was having apartment troubles and talked about it on the podcast, he said “Does Beth live, like, in Haiti? Doesn’t it sound like that? Like, the urine smell, the woman in the muumuu, the stray cats.”
When Triffon mentioned she had given a dollar to a homeless woman, Richards said, “That’s the sound of America going down the toilet,” and argued that she would turn around and buy drugs with the money.
Richards says he favors white, male hosts.
Among the list of awful things that Richards has said, he’s praised the idea of “skinny white hosts.”
When the "Survivor" host Jeff Probst transitioned to daytime TV and hosted his own talk show, Richards brought race into it, implying it factored into his success.
“Jeff Probst had a daytime talk show, which I was cheering for because I like, you know, the average white-guy host,” he said, “I cheer for him to succeed because I feel like through his success I could have some success hosting.
When talking about American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, he said “I think he’s actually made the world a safer place for what I like to call the skinny white host, like George [Gray] and I.”
So what, Richards? You can't feel empowered by seeing a non-white or non-male succeed?
The list of Mike Richards’ transgressions goes on and on, and people are angry that Richards is the one to take the place of Alex Trebek’s legacy.
Mike Richards has apologized for his offensive past comments.
Upon the release of the news, Richards sent a statement to the show’s staff to address everything and claim that it does not “reflect the reality” of who he is.
Hopefully all of the backlash and Richards’ resignation will be enough for Sony to take on a better educated, less offensive host.
Alex Trebek’s legacy deserves that.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice and politics.