Drew Basile‘s time on Jeopardy! has come to an end. The Survivor alum finally lost on Friday, June 28, after winning seven games and qualifying for the Tournament of Champions. His winnings total was $129,601, but says his performance was ‘terrible’ in the game that saw him exit the show.
He was eliminated after giving the wrong answer in Final Jeopardy. Basile was defeated by Cat Pisacano, who beat him by over $10,000. Basile finished with just $1,201 while Pisacano’s finale score was $11,500.
Initially struggling in the first Jeopardy round, the Survivor star came back with a total of $9,600 after Double Jeopardy. It was the Final Jeopardy question that did Basile in, however, risking $8,399 on the category “Notable American Women.”
The question was: “In her autobiography she tells of a rather ‘singular coincidence,’ that one of her Swiss ancestors was a teacher of the deaf.” Basile incorrectly guessed Gallaudet. The correct answer was Hellen Keller.
Pisacano, who did guess correctly, bet $5,700 of her $5,800 to win the episode, though Basile narrowly beat out Andrew Fox, who also guessed Keller correctly.
Basile, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, spoke about where his mind was going into the Final Jeopardy round of his last game.
“Jeopardy is fatiguing. You saw that with Adriana, and you certainly saw with me. By the end of the taping day, I was exhausted,” Basile said. “I had had a terrible Single Jeopardy round, making all kinds of mistakes…But then I had a come to Jesus moment in Double Jeopardy, I had really rallied. I felt I was performing better, and I finally had secured a relatively stable position going into Final Jeopardy. And the amazing thing about Final Jeopardy was I knew the answer…I was just so tired, for the life of me I couldn’t remember Helen Keller’s name.”
The reality TV competitor also spoke to the timing of getting to play both Survivor and Jeopardy! in the same year year.
“I figured I had a decent chance,” Basile said to EW of his tryouts for Jeopardy! “Trivia competing is something I love, and I really didn’t have much expectation beyond that…I was fortunate enough to get all the way through callbacks. I forgot about that and about a year and a half later, I was fortunate to get a test message, and I was like, ‘There’s no way this is real,’ especially since I had just gotten off Survivor…I had to pinch myself every morning…I was extremely fortunate to be able to, back-to-back, play both my dreams on TV in a single year.”
In the same interview, Basile explained the ways his time on Survivor prepared him for competing on Jeopardy!
“Both are cerebral, but the way that intelligence applies is completely different. The main thing that Survivor might have prepared me for is a kind of comfortability in front of the camera. I did have some experience being on TV in a high stakes thing and being okay with the idea that this would reflect back on me in the public sphere,” he said.
Additionally, Basile could not overstate how physically taxing Survivor was.
“You’re losing an insane amount of weight. You’re really in the elements,” Basile shared in the same interview. “If anything, on TV, they hide the most intense survival moments, because that’s how real it is. At the same time, Jeopardy was demanding and rigorous on the level of the mind, in a way I have not been challenged in a long time.”
Basile’s Jeopardy! run is only beginning. Since Basile won five games in a row, he is now eligible to compete in the Tournament of Champions after the conclusion of season 40. There, he may have a chance to compete against Adriana Harmeyer, who he eliminated after her own 15-day winning streak.
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