Celebrity Jeopardy! All-Stars premieres tonight on ABC at 8 p.m. ET, kicking off the show’s fourth season with a 21-contestant tournament that brings back every past champion and the strongest returning players from the previous three seasons.
The winner takes home $1 million for their chosen charity. Before tonight’s taping, sports broadcaster Katie Nolan had what she described as one of the best moments of her life, and it had nothing to do with the game itself.
Katie Nolan’s Fangirl Moment
Nolan, an Emmy-winning sports comedy host currently at SiriusXM’s Fan Service and the podcast Casuals, is one of the most openly obsessive Jeopardy! fans in the public eye.
She watches the show every night with her fiancée. She has specific favorites among the regular champion circuit.
She is, in the most genuine sense of the word, a superfan who happened to be good enough at trivia to become a Celebrity Jeopardy! finalist in Season 2.
Before tonight’s taping, the production arranged a surprise. Nolan was told something was happening but kept deliberately in the dark about what.
Then Sam Buttrey, one of the most beloved regular Jeopardy! champions in recent years, walked out to meet her. Andrew He, another fan favorite, joined via phone.
“They were being kind of vague about what we were going to be doing,” Nolan told host Ken Jennings in an exclusive clip.
“So, I was just standing there, and then Sam Buttrey came walking out, surprised me. We called Andrew He on the phone.”
She described the whole thing as “incredible” and said that being at Jeopardy! is “truly, my favorite thing on Earth.”
Jennings noted that Nolan’s passion for the show “shows up in her gameplay,” a compliment with teeth given that she made it to the Season 2 finals and raised $100,000 for charity in the process.
Buttrey and He did not offer Nolan technical Jeopardy! strategy before tonight’s taping.
What they gave her instead was a locker room pep talk, all sports clichés, delivered with full sincerity.
Nolan, as a sports journalist, found this both hilarious and oddly effective. “It was all just sports clichés,” she said with a laugh.
“It might help, but who knows?” Jennings joked that given her background, she probably loved every second of it. She did not deny it.
Tonight Nolan faces Rachel Dratch and Mark Duplass in Quarterfinal 1. She is playing for The Trevor Project.
Who Is On Tonight And Who Are The Other Contestants?
Tonight’s Quarterfinal 1 features three players with very different Jeopardy! histories. Nolan is the returning finalist, the known quantity, the one with the most to prove and the most context.
Rachel Dratch is an SNL veteran who has played Celebrity Jeopardy! before and returns as a proven competitor.
Mark Duplass is a filmmaker and actor making his All-Stars debut, bringing what Jennings and fans will quickly discover is either a wealth of eclectic knowledge or a very specific set of blind spots, the kind you only find out about under game show pressure.
The full 21-contestant field, pulled from all three previous seasons, is one of the strongest Celebrity Jeopardy! lineups ever assembled. Here is the complete bracket:
Quarterfinal 1 — Tonight, March 13: Rachel Dratch, Mark Duplass, Katie Nolan
Quarterfinal 2 — March 20: Macaulay Culkin, Steven Weber, Jackie Tohn
Quarterfinal 3 — March 27: Sean Gunn, Cynthia Nixon, Roy Wood Jr.
Quarterfinal 4 — April 10: Mina Kimes, Andy Richter, Timothy Simons
Quarterfinal 5 — April 17: Robin Thede, Patton Oswalt, Margaret Cho
Quarterfinal 6 — May 8: Mo Rocca, Mira Sorvino, Ray Romano
The three past champions, Ike Barinholtz (Season 1), Lisa Ann Walter (Season 2), and W. Kamau Bell (Season 3), bypass the quarterfinals entirely and go directly to the semifinals, where they will face the six quarterfinal winners.
Each contestant is playing for a charity of their choice. Among the causes represented: The Trevor Project (Nolan), Doctors Without Borders USA (Cynthia Nixon), the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank (Andy Richter), Black Girls Code (Robin Thede), Women for Women International (Sean Gunn), DonorsChoose (W. Kamau Bell, defending the charity he won for last season), the Noonan Syndrome Foundation (Ike Barinholtz), and the Fund for Women’s Equality (Lisa Ann Walter).
The Format And What Is At Stake
Celebrity Jeopardy! All-Stars runs across 10 hourlong episodes: six quarterfinals, three semifinals, and one final.
The tournament structure is a straight bracket, one winner from each quarterfinal advances to the semifinals, where they join the three seeded returning champions. The three semifinal winners meet in the finale.
The prize structure rewards every level of participation. Contestants eliminated in the quarterfinals earn $30,000 for their charities.
Those who make it to the semifinals but do not reach the final earn $50,000.
The two finalists who do not win receive $175,000 each for their charities. The winner takes home $1 million for their chosen cause, and earns an invitation to the regular Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, placing them alongside the show’s greatest everyday players.
That last element is significant.
The Celebrity Jeopardy! champion does not just win a celebrity version of a game, they earn a legitimate seat at the most competitive table in the history of American game shows.
It is a real prize with real stakes, and it changes how seriously the best celebrity competitors approach the game.
Who Are The Three Past Champions?
Ike Barinholtz won Season 1. The actor, writer, and director, best known for The Mindy Project and recently seen in the Emmy-winning series The Studio, is playing for the Noonan Syndrome Foundation.
He told reporters before the season: “I feel like a guinea pig a little bit, but I like guinea pigs, they’re adorable, like me. But yeah, it’s an honor to be here.”
Lisa Ann Walter won Season 2. Best known from The Parent Trap and currently playing Melissa Schemmenti on ABC’s Abbott Elementary, she is playing for the Fund for Women’s Equality.
Her attachment to her Jeopardy! win is well documented, she has said publicly she wants to be buried with her trophy, describing it as her urn.
W. Kamau Bell won Season 3, taking home $1 million for DonorsChoose.
The comedian and CNN host of Have I Got News for You returns as the most recently crowned champion and the one with the shortest gap between winning and defending.
All three bypass the quarterfinal gauntlet. Whether that rested confidence gives them an edge against opponents who will arrive at the semifinals fresh off a competitive win, or whether the layoff costs them sharpness, is one of the genuine strategic questions hanging over the tournament.
Where To Watch And When
Celebrity Jeopardy! All-Stars premieres tonight, Friday March 13, at 8 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. PT on ABC.
The episode streams on Hulu the following day. New episodes air weekly on Fridays at the same time through May, with a break between Quarterfinal 3 (March 27) and Quarterfinal 4 (April 10).
The season finale, which will determine which celebrity takes home $1 million for charity, airs later in the spring.
Ken Jennings hosts. The series is produced by Sony Pictures Television
