In current weeks, there’s been a “Wheel of Fortune” puzzle that may’t be solved by shopping for a vowel or guessing one other consonant: What on this planet is happening with host Pat Sajak?
The 76-year-old recreation present legend has been performing fairly bizarrely.
Within the final month or so, Sajak has put a contestant in a chokehold; claimed he hides in letter-turner Vanna White’s backyard; requested a contestant to take away his shirt and tugged on a contestant’s beard.
On this previous Monday night time’s present, he even scolded a contestant who grabbed the envelope within the present’s bonus spherical: “Don’t ever do it once more!”
One can’t assist however marvel if America’s longest-running recreation present host has lastly had sufficient — or possibly he was all the time this unusual and grumpy.
Getting bored with the wordplay grind could be comprehensible.
He’s been internet hosting “Wheel” for 4 many years, since 1981. The fashions have modified, however the recreation has remained very a lot the identical.
By comparability, Johnny Carson’s seemingly unending reign on “The Tonight Present” was simply 30 years — and the King of Late Evening took 15 weeks of trip on the finish of his run.
Sajak’s current hijinks aren’t the primary time he’s exhibited unusual conduct.
Within the fall of 2020, in a span of 10 days, there have been quite a few incidents.
He snapped at a contestant for “interrupting” him whereas he learn a business promo on one present.
On one other, he advised a competitor to “cease making sound results” once they set free a celebratory yelp. “Ungrateful gamers! I’ve had it!” he mentioned to a different participant once they questioned a solution as “redundant.”
In 2021, he even mocked a younger man’s speech obstacle on air.
The next yr, he made viewers cringe when he requested longtime letter-turner Vanna White, “Have you ever ever watched opera within the buff? I’m simply curious.”
Such moments reportedly put Sajak on skinny ice along with his bosses.
“Pat has put his foot in it one too many occasions and offended individuals along with his off-color humor and temperamental conduct,” an insider advised OK! final September. “Community brass and top-level producers have come down onerous on him and browse him the riot act.”
(Representatives for “Wheel of Fortune” and Sajak didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark.)
Off-camera, Sajak’s conduct will also be edgy.
Like his “Wheel of Fortune” predecessor Chuck Woolery, he’s recognized for publicly expressing his conservative views on a wide range of subjects, resembling COVID vaccines and local weather change.
He as soon as tweeted, “World warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly deceptive for their very own ends” — solely to later apologize and delete the missive.
Politics apart, Sajak is understood for his slicing humorousness.
Maybe he’s tried some unhealthy jokes of late, however many say he’s a pleasure to be round.
“Pat was great to work with … and I’ve nothing however good issues to say about him. He couldn’t have been nicer,” an business insider who labored with Sajak for a number of years on “Wheel” advised The Put up.
A feminine contestant on the present in 2019 had equally constructive issues to say.
“He was truly tremendous humorous and sharp. I didn’t get the ick,” she advised The Put up.
Viewers and advertisers appear, for probably the most half, completely satisfied.
“Wheel” stays on the prime of the syndicated heap with its sister present “Jeopardy!” — which can also be produced by Sony Photos Tv.
Within the week ending April 17, it pulled in over eight million viewers every weeknight — and it’s exhibiting no indicators of slowing down even amid its host’s outbursts.
Sponsors will not be pulling adverts, nor are they threatening to take action — all the time an indication of bother in TV land.
There’s an off probability that Sajak’s current conduct is expounded to some well being challenge unknown to most people.
In 2019, he revealed that he’d virtually died after struggling an intestinal blockage that required emergency surgical procedure.
“I bear in mind pondering, not in a morbid manner, ‘I believe this have to be dying. This have to be what dying is like,’” he advised Good Morning America.
Seemingly extra possible is the chance that Sajak’s acting-out is a contract ploy.
He and White, 66, with whom he reportedly will get on famously, are each signed by 2024.
Sajak earns an estimated $15 million a yr and added a profitable govt producer credit score to his internet hosting duties in his final deal.
He’s estimated to be price between $65 million and $75 million and owns each a sprawling hilltop residence in Los Angeles and a brick mansion in Severna Park, Maryland.
He and his spouse — Maryland native Lesly-Brown Sajak — divide their time between the 2.
Their kids — son Patrick, 32, and daughter Maggie, 28 — are grown, however Maggie is moving into the household enterprise, in addition to carving her personal path as a rustic singer.
She’s been the present’s “Social Correspondent” since 2021 — taking pictures behind-the-scenes clips and interviews with the present’s employees and contestants and sharing them on-line.
Every now and then, Maggie has even stepped in for White because the present’s letter-turner — although neither she nor present officers have mentioned something publicly about what that might imply when each her father and White ultimately depart the present.
Sajak has acknowledged that his ultimate puzzle is coming pretty quickly.
In 2021, he advised “Leisure Tonight” that he and White are “definitely nearer to the top than the start” and that “I’d like to go away earlier than individuals tune in and have a look at me and say, ‘Ooh, what occurred to him?’”
Certainly, that point could also be now.