In recent weeks, there’s been a “Wheel of Fortune” puzzle that cannot be solved by buying a vowel or guessing one other consonant: What is going on on in the world with host Pat Sajak?
The 76-year-old game show legend has been acting quite strangely.
Over the past month or so, Sajak has been choking a fighter; claimed to be hiding in the garden of the list-turner Vanna White; asked the contestant to take off his shirt and pulled the contestant’s beard.
Last Monday night, he even scolded a contestant who caught an envelope in the show’s bonus round: “Never do this again!”
You may’t help but wonder if America’s longest-running game show host has finally had enough – or possibly he’s all the time been this weird and grumpy.
Drained of wordplay can be comprehensible.
He has been running Koło for 4 a long time, since 1981. Fashions have modified, however the game has stayed just about the identical.
By comparison, Johnny Carson’s seemingly limitless reign on “The Tonight Show” lasted only 30 years – and the late night king took 15 weeks off at the tip of his run.
Sajak’s recent abductions aren’t the primary time he’s exhibited strange behavior.
In the autumn of 2020, there have been many incidents in 10 days.
He barked at a contestant for “interrupting” him while he was reading an promoting ad on one of the shows.
On one other, he told the contestant to “stop doing sound effects” once they gave a solemn shout. “Ungrateful players! I had it!” he said to a different player as they questioned the reply as “redundant”.
In 2021, he even mocked the young man’s speech impediment on the air.
The following 12 months he left viewers stunned when he asked Vanna White, a longtime letter twister, “Have you ever ever watched opera in buff? I’m just curious.”
Supposedly, moments like this put Sajak on thin ice along with his bosses.
“Pat put his foot in it one too again and again and offended people along with his bizarre humor and temperament” – the informant said OK! last September. “Network executives and top-level producers took a tough have a look at him and skim him the riot act.”
(Representatives of Wheel of Fortune and Sajak didn’t reply to repeated requests for comment.)
Off-camera, Sajak’s behavior may also be irritating.
like his “Wheel of Fortune” predecessor, Chuck Woolery, he is thought publicly expressing his conservative views on variety of topicsreminiscent of COVID vaccines climate change.
He once tweeted: “Global warming ladies are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their very own purposes” – only to later apologize and delete the message.
Politics aside, Sajak is known for his wry sense of humor.
He can have been attempting to make jokes recently, but many say he’s a pleasure to be with.
“It was great working with Pat… and I even have nothing but good things to say about him. He couldn’t have been nicer,” an industry insider who worked with Sajak on Wheel for several years told The Post.
A participant in the 2019 program had similarly positive things to say.
“He was actually very funny and sharp. I didn’t catch the disease,” she told The Post.
Viewers and advertisers seem mostly comfortable.
“Wheel” stays at the highest of the syndication heap with sister show “Jeopardy!” — which can also be produced by Sony Pictures Television.
For the week ending April 17, it drew over 8 million viewers each week — and shows no sign of slowing down, even amid the host’s outbursts.
Sponsors don’t download ads or threaten to achieve this – that is all the time an indication of trouble on TV.
There’s a slight possibility that Sajak’s recent behavior is said to some health problem unknown to most people.
In 2019, he revealed that he nearly died after having an intestinal blockage that required emergency surgery.
“I remember pondering, not in a morbid way, ‘I feel this should be death. That is what death must appear to be,’ he said said Good Morning America.
The seemingly more plausible possibility is that Sajak’s acting is a contract ploy.
He and White, 66, with whom he is alleged to get along thoroughly, each are signed until 2024.
Sajak earns about $15 million a 12 months and added a lucrative executive producer credit to his hosting duties in his latest deal.
It’s estimated to be price between $65 million and $75 million AND he owns a sprawling house on a hill in Los Angeles and a brick mansion in Severna Park, Maryland.
He and his wife, Maryland native Lesly-Brown Sajak, divide their time together.
Their children – 32-year-old son Patrick and 28-year-old daughter Maggie – are adults, but Maggie she enters the family business and likewise forges her own path as a rustic singer.
As of 2021, she is the show’s “community correspondent”, filming behind-the-scenes clips and interviewing show staff and contestants and sharing them online.
Infrequently, Maggie has even filled in for White because the show’s letter-turner – although neither she nor show officials have said anything publicly about what it’d mean when each her father and White eventually leave the show.
Sajak admitted that his final puzzle will come up pretty soon.
In 2021 he said:Entertainment tonightthat he and White are “definitely closer to the tip than the start” and that “I’d like to depart before people activate and have a look at me and say, ‘Oh, what happened to him?'”
Indeed, that point could also be now.