Each celebrity Jeopardy! guest host will serve a two-week stint

USA Today

It was previously believed that the celebrity guest-hosts would only work one or two episodes. But Mike Richards, who made his debut tonight as interim Jeopardy! guest host for the next two weeks, revealed that each will serve two-week stints. Once Richards' two weeks are up, Katie Couric will take over on March 8, followed by Dr. Mehmet Oz on March 22 and Aaron Rodgers on April 5. Dates for Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Savannah Guthrie, Bill Whitaker and Mayim Bialik have yet to be announced. Richards, a veteran game show host who said on tonight's show that he was a last-minute guest host due to Los Angeles' COVID crisis, said of his two-week stint: "In some ways it’s easier for me, because I’m an executive producer. So if I didn’t like the way (a clue) was written I could get mad at me. Once I was able to get (past) the enormity of the man who stood behind the lectern for the better part of four decades … it was very fun.  But at every commercial break, as I stepped back, I would think of Alex, who he was, how great he was, and it was easy to get in your head that way. I didn’t know I was going to be doing it until three days before, and so I had not prepared myself to host in the way that I know other guest hosts are. So there was just a lot to unpack. Plus, I also only owned one suit, so there was a little bit of scrambling there. It was very fun; humbling doesn’t begin to describe the feeling. It hit me like a ton of bricks when Johnny Gilbert announced my name. That’s of course the last thing you hear when you start to walk out. … and it was overwhelming in the moment." ALSO: Jeopardy! fans are thirsting over Mike Richards on his first night as interim guest host.