Ewan McGregor is causing a major rift amongst Jeopardy! viewers … except, he didn’t actually do anything. During Monday night’s (March 20) episode, a contestant’s response to a clue about the Scottish actor sparked debate among fans of the long-running game show, with a few blaming host Ken Jennings.
The competition featured one-day champ Kelly Barry playing against Jake Garrett, a football coach, and Melissa Klapper, a professor. The group ran a tight game ,with the winner beating her component by $1.
In the third round of the first part of the game, the category was “Quite the Fish Story,” and Jennings read the $600 clue: “The force of Lasse Hallström was strong to pull in this Scot to play a fisheries expert in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.”
Klapper rang in and answered, “Who is Ewan McGregor?” to which Jennings answered, “That is correct!” While the professor was happy to win the big bucks, many fans have accused her of saying “Who is Ewan Gregor?”
One viewer tweeted the show’s account, writing, “Hi Ken, on tonight’s Jeopardy, Kelly answered ‘Ewan Gregor’ to the question about Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and was given the points when the answer should have been Ewan McGregor. Were the scores ever corrected?”
Another commented, “I swear Melissa said ‘Ewan Gregor’ with no ‘Mc’ in her response in the first round. I even rewound the DVR and relistened a couple times to confirm.”
A third chimed in with, “Your winner tonight got that answer wrong. I rewinded it three times to be sure. Since she got that wrong, she should not have won. You didn’t catch it?! Trebek would have,” in reference to late Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek.
Anyone else notice that Melissa gave a response of “Ewan Gregor” instead of Ewen MCGregor on tonight’s episode of #Jeopardy? Clearly the judges didn’t…
— Nancy (@newf93) March 20, 2023
The debate even made its way to the show’s Reddit page where one fan wrote, “Melissa answered ‘Ewan Gregor’ instead of ‘Ewan McGregor’ or am I hearing incorrectly? Both my partner and I seemed to hear it.”
Another commented, “I rewound it back, she absolutely said Ewen Gregor, but I can only assume the judges have a direct feed to the contestants microphone which we don’t hear when the sound gets mixed for television, and they heard something different.”
But, one fan claimed that they rewatched the scene in slow speed and “watched her mouth.” They wrote, “The ‘Mc’ is definitely there but barely audible.” Another agreed and commented, “Yeah that was my thought too, like sometimes we don’t quite hear the “what is” even if a contestant said it.” Jeopardy! has yet to respond to the accusations.
Jeopardy! airs on weekdays at 7/6c on ABC.
