In his very first moment onscreen in Survivor 45, Drew Basile declared himself to be “one of the smartest people to ever play this game.” It was a quite a polarizing statement to make at the time, but he’s backing up his claim now — just on a totally different game show. While the 23-year-old master’s student ultimately didn’t win his season of Survivor, he is the first-ever alum from that show to appear on Jeopardy, on which he won seven consecutive games and qualified for the Tournament of Champions. However, his winning streak finally came to an end on Friday when he lost in his eighth appearance by giving the wrong answer in Final Jeopardy. “The run has come to an end, so it’s a little bit less exciting now,” Basile tells Entertainment Weekly. “But I get to play again, so already I’ve taken the loss in stride. I’m excited to be back there on the Alex Trebek stage sometime in the near future.” Below, Basile unpacks his impressive seven-game winning streak, why he lost when he says he knew the answer to Final Jeopardy, and how his experience on Survivor prepared him for this.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY:
Did you always want to go on Jeopardy or did that come about after you went on Survivor?
DREW BASILE: What’s funny is I had grown up watching two shows, Jeopardy and Survivor. Nobody had much faith in [me playing] Survivor. But Jeopardy, everyone always said when I was a little kid watching the show, “You’re going to go on one day?” I had always thought that maybe I could do well at Jeopardy, because I’m good at history, I’m good at literature, in general I’ve been a great student. I figured I had a decent chance. Trivia competing is something I love, and I really didn’t have much expectation beyond that.
How did you get cast on Jeopardy? Was it something you were trying to do before Survivor?
DREW BASILE: They made the test go online a couple years ago. I thought, what the heck? I’ll happily take the online test. 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 text message, and I was like, “There’s no way this is real,” especially since I had just gotten off Survivor. Jeopardy is such an opportunity that you kind of don’t believe it happened until it’s time to fly out there to L.A. It was really a whirlwind. I was extremely fortunate to be able to, back-to-back, play both my dreams on TV in a single year. The timing couldn’t be planned any better.
No, it really can’t at all. I had to pinch myself every morning. My mother has a conventional view of career paths and things like that, so she was excited about it but, “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve got to get a job. This is not a certain thing.” I think she was quite disconcerted when Jeopardy came around right after Survivor.
I love that your mom was still on you like, “You’re going on Jeopardy after Survivor, but you still need to get a job!”
[Laughs] My mom is always keeping me humble.
How did your time on Survivor help prepare you for Jeopardy?
DREW BASILE: It can’t be overstated that they really are very two different kinds of games. 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. And then secondarily, it makes interacting with the fans a little bit easier, because whenever you go on TV, there’s like a sense of, “Oh my gosh, people are going to judge me. They’re going to pick up on my mistakes. I won’t be able to defend myself.” That’s very disconcerting for a lot of people. I had already kind of gone through that, so with Jeopardy, it didn’t phase me and I was able to really lean into the experience and just kind of a great time. It was a blast.
Looking back at your overall experiences, which was more difficult: Survivor or Jeopardy?
DREW BASILE: It’s hard to say, because Jeopardy is still so fresh, so I have all the
