‘What is Jonathan Fisher?’ Meet the new ‘Jeopardy!’ champ who gave the 305 a shout-out
UPDATE: Jonathan Fisher’s 11-game winning streak came to an end with the Oct. 26, 2021 broadcast. He had won $246,100 in his run and qualified for the “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions competition.
There could only be one answer to the “Jeopardy!” question after Monday night’s episode: “Who is this new ‘Jeopardy!’ champion ‘originally from Coral Gables’ who finally dethroned the seemingly immovable Matt Amodio?”
“What is Jonathan Fisher?”
The grammar gaffe, of course, is in spirit with the 38-game champ Amodio’s strategy of conserving brain power by answering every question with “what’s” even if “who’s” would be more accurate to refer to a person.
“It’s been a wild ride. I’ve been sitting on this for about a month so it’s nice to finally have it out in the open,” Fisher said in a phone interview with the Miami Herald of his victory on the popular daily TV game show.
On Tuesday night’s broadcast, Fisher started his own potential “Jeopardy!” streak by winning his second game.
Fisher’s Florida background
Fisher, 30, was born and raised in Coral Gables — technically, Baptist Hospital in Kendall, not far from the Gables home his parents still live in, he said. Dad, Jonathan Sr. is a retired senior vice president of SunBank/Miami and SunTrust and Mom, Jann, is an attorney.
Fisher graduated from St. Stephens Elementary and is a Class of 2008 Ransom Everglades graduate. At Ransom Everglades, when he was in seventh grade in 2003, Fisher was one of 15 students to achieve state level recognition in the Duke University Talent Identification Program and he acted in numerous school productions.
He earned his bachelor’s in theater and English literature from Northwestern University in 2012 and had several stage roles in Rhode Island after graduation. For the last few years, Fisher has lived in Southern California where he is a professional stage actor. “Particularly, with a company that does a Shakespeare tour every summer where we tour all around Southern California,” he said.
In 2016, in one of his earlier roles, at Rhode Island’s Gamm Theatre, Fisher earned critical applause for his role as Mairtin Hanlon, a gravedigger’s non-too-swift assistant in the play “A Skull in Connemara.”
“It’s always fun to play someone who isn’t very smart,” he told Edge Media Network at the time.
Of course, in real life, Fisher proved smart enough to bump off Amodio by correctly answering the final “Jeopardy!” question on Countries of the World: “Nazi Germany annexed this nation and divided it into regions of the Alps and the Danube; the Allies later divided it into 4 sectors.”
Fisher (and runner-up Jessica Stephens) both knew the correct answer was Austria. Amodio responded, “Poland.” Fisher’s all-in wager brought him to a game-winning total of $29,200.
What Amodio said after he lost
So what did Amodio, the vanquished champ, say to Fisher and Stephens after host Mayim Bialik bid the audience goodnight after congratulating both the new winner and the old champ?
“He said, ‘Great game, you guys played really, really well’ and we had a couple moments afterward but I got to shake his hand and he said, ‘I’m rooting for you. I hope you go on a big streak, too.’ He was very gracious and I joked to him. I said, ‘If you want to give me your $1.5 million I’ll take that and you can keep playing.’ He didn’t want to take me up on that,” Fisher said, chuckling.
For “Jeopardy!” contestants it’s a long day in the studio in Culver City, California, Fisher said. Contestants arrive by 7:30 in the morning and the first taping is around 11 a.m. Beforehand, there’s a little rehearsal and makeup and producers give contestants a rundown of how the show works.
Five episodes are filmed each day, back-to-back and Fisher said contestants are asked to stick around during the day to act as audience members because of COVID safety protocols. “So it’s a long day, from 7 or so till about 5 or 6 through all the games that are happening that day.”
And given that Amodio had been a contestant for so long — his run coincided with a season break and the controversial search for a new permanent host, which is still up in the air, Fisher figured he might well be facing the champ who went through contestants like Bruce the mechanical shark in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws.”
Daunting task?
“Going in, I was pretty sure that he would still be there, though by the time I went there he would have to win another 15 or so games, which is an outrageous amount, but I had a feeling he would,” Fisher said.
“So when I got there that day, I saw him there, and I was like, ‘OK he’s here.’ The odds of beating this guy are so low I kind of took the pressure off and said, ‘This is just a great experience. I can say I was on ‘Jeopardy!’ and I get to go home and have this.’ In a way it was intimidating. But in a way it was also a way to relax into it and take the pressure off so it was kind of a mixed bag,” Fisher said.
Fisher’s strategy clearly worked. Until a contestant’s full run on “Jeopardy!” airs he or she can’t tell you any details on winnings. That’s called a spoiler.
“The only thing I can say is I am on tonight again,” Fisher said Tuesday. “I think Matt did a really great job at bringing the focus of the game back to the players and the trivia and the format of the show. So I hope watching me tonight, too, will continue to do that and remind people that ‘Jeopardy’ is all about interesting people with a lot of knowledge kind of playing this funky game.”
On his second appearance Tuesday, Fisher went into the Final Jeopardy! question with a commanding lead of $30,000 over his competitors, Brittany Iburg, a stay-at-home mom from Roswell, Georgia, who trailed at $5,200, and Robinson-Gissette Cruz, an art assistant from the Bronx, New York, who had $3,600.
Iburg was the only one to correctly answer the clue, about the Harper publishing family. Though Fisher answered incorrectly, with “Penguin,” his wager was $7,500, small enough to give him a second-day victory of $22,500. His two-day “Jeopardy!” total is $51,700.
Fisher said he became a fan of the game show during Ken Jennings’ record 74-game run in 2003.
So how does one become a Jennings or Amodio or, maybe, a Fisher?
The Coral Gables guy has a tip.
“A big part of what the show is is a lot more than just having a broad knowledge base. There’s accessing it really quickly. There’s being quick on the buzzer and timing that with the lights and the randomness of who you are playing against,” he said. “The knowledge is there and people probably know a lot more than they realize. The entertainment of the show is putting all of those things together and seeing what happens.”
What’s up with Amodio’s ‘what’s?’
For those who need a refresher, after Amodio’s “what’s” quirk became divisive water cooler fodder, Amodio told EW in September, “I went about the approach of saying the fewer things to think about the better. If you have a moving part, that moving part can go wrong. And so, I found the simplest most repeatable approach I could and went with it.”
It worked and the strategy is within the rules of “Jeopardy!”
The Yale computer science Ph.D. student and Ohio native’s 38-game streak won him $1,518,601 in regular game winnings. On Oct. 1, Amodio topped aggressive James Holzhauer’s consecutive wins with his 33rd victory. He follows only Jennings, the winner of 74 consecutive games, according to USA Today.
Amodio follows Jennings and Holzhauer in highest earnings of regular season play. Jennings is tops with $2,520,700. Holzhauer amassed $2,462,216 in regular play winnings. Amodio is currently in fourth place among highest all-time winnings, which includes tournament play.
Brad Rutter’s combined regular “Jeopardy!” run and tournament total is $4,938,426. Jennings is at $4,370,700. Holzhauer is at $2,962,216. Amodio will have a chance to play catch up when he returns later in the season for the next “Jeopardy: Tournament of Champions.”
Why the Coral Gables shout-out?
Fisher lives in La Habra, a city in California’s Orange County. But he was identified by the “Jeopardy!” announcer as “originally from Coral Gables.”
That was by design. “I wanted to give a shout-out to my hometown,” Fisher said. “I’ve lived here a couple years but I don’t necessarily identify myself as being a La Habra person. Especially when they say ‘So and so is from town...’ So it felt disingenuous to say La Habra. They gave me the option to say, ‘Originally from Coral Gables, so I thought that is great. I’ll give a shout-out to my hometown and I identify pretty strongly to be from South Florida so it felt good to say that.”
This story was originally published October 12, 2021 at 4:20 PM.
