Jennings suggested following the example of the late Alex Trebek.
“The great thing about ‘Jeopardy’ is the game kind of runs itself,” Jennings said. “If you watch Alex, he had this light touch where he would do, you know, sometimes the least possible.
“He would kind of take himself out of the spotlight and very generously put it on the players. And I found that the more you could do that, ‘Jeopardy’ kind of runs itself.”
Ultimately, Jennings said, “You almost are not going to know what it’s like until you are in that chair.”
“The main advice, I think, is that less is more,” he told Cooper.
Jennings said that Trebek really was gifted at making the show about the competitors.
“It’s hard to imagine anybody in show business doing that, insisting that he not be billed as the star of ‘Jeopardy!,'” he said. “The game was the star, he always said.
“You don’t wanna do a slavish impression,” Jennings said, but “the more you can host that show the way people remember Alex doing it, the kinder the audience will be.”
Trebek died in November after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He had hosted “Jeopardy!” since 1984, when this revival version of the quiz show first debuted.
Jennings holds the record for most consecutive games won at 74. He was the first in a series of guest-hosts after Trebek’s death.