No One's Ever Enjoyed Dominating Celebrity Jeopardy as Much as Katie Nolan

We have an entire pocket of the entertainment industry dedicated to uncovering the true personalities of our celebrity class, but there's no better vehicle to get to the core of a celebrity than Celebrity Jeopardy. As we approach the Season 2 finale, one player in particular has stood out not only with her trivia acumen but with her personality. Katie Nolan is best known to sports fans for her work on Fox Sports and ESPN, but she's been blazing a path through Celebrity Jeopardy, racking up memorable victories in the quarterfinals and semifinals. Along the way, Nolan has been funny, anxious, and loudly competitive, making her exactly the kind of contestant we like most, and that the Jeopardy franchise should value.

Nolan’s name isn’t likely to ring bells unless you’re plugged into sports media. While hosting a sports talk and entertainment show on Fox News, she became a lightning rod for controversy the way many female sports reporters do: by calling out the sexism that exists within sports media. After a brief stint with Apple TV+ doing color commentary for professional baseball, Nolan was let go amid complaints from male fans. "I can tell you from reading the words that were written, there was at least a little bit of misogyny in it," Nolan said about her time at Apple. "Because why are they bringing up that I’m a woman? Why is that coming up so often if it has nothing to do with the criticism?"

If her time in the trenches among the wailing malcontents of sports dudes on social media has made Nolan gun-shy about being overtly competitive with men, you wouldn't know it from her appearances on Celebrity Jeopardy. In her quarterfinal match, she went toe-to-toe with Law & Order's Christopher Meloni, whose intensity was on high. Nolan actually screwed up the math in Final Jeopardy, resulting in a tie, and ultimately won on a tiebreaker question. Afterward, Meloni detailed a laundry list of reasons why he didn't win, including being blindsided by the "Triple Jeopardy" round that's been instituted for the new primetime game, and being out of sync with host Ken Jennings' rhythms.

Nolan didn't need excuses nor a tiebreaker to defeat Steven Weber and Dulé Hill in the semifinals, though there did seem to be a palpable rivalry between her and Weber. Nolan confirmed this in a post-mortem appearance on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast, where she said that during commercial breaks, Weber would smack-talk by addressing her fiancé, comedian Dan Soder. "It was like, I would say something to him, and he would turn to him — a guy, my 'man' — who wasn't even on stage, and address him instead of me."

"It really helped that he was being a jerk," Nolan later said, "because then I was like, 'let's go.'"

Whatever the motivation, Nolan's two Celebrity Jeopardy appearances feature some of the most boisterous, animated gaming we've seen on the show. Besides bantering with fellow contestants like Sherri Shepherd, Nolan agonized over just missing questions, fist-pumped when she realized she knew the answer to a Daily Double, and was thoroughly unconcerned with seeming uncool or overly hyped up.

You'd think that all the celebrities who play Jeopardy would act like this. After all, they don’t keep the winnings. They're also charming and telegenic for a living. And yet, time and again, celebs act excessively professional or reserved, as if they're playing the role of Jeopardy contestant. Meloni looked like he was passing a gallstone as Nolan was besting him in the quarterfinals. She has as good of a reason as anyone to be self-conscious in a competition like Jeopardy, given how many sports fans on social media seem to await her every action with pitchforks. Instead, she's giving a running commentary throughout the game, showing off her trivia know-how, and roasting the hell out of Old Man Weber.

If Nolan were bad at the trivia aspects of Jeopardy, this wouldn't be half as fun, but she's won two games in a row, and neither has been a fluke. She ran the table on the "Demonyms" category in the quarterfinal — her bona fides are established. Dominating trivia and having the most fun of anyone on screen? That's what we come to Celebrity Jeopardy to see.

The season finale of primetime Celebrity Jeopardy airs Tuesday, January 23rd at 8:00 PM ET. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.