I’ll take Brooklyn “Jeopardy!” contestants for $400, Alex!
A Prospect-Lefferts Gardens trivia nerd fulfilled her lifelong goal of competing in America’s ultimate general-knowledge contest in an episode that will screen on Friday night.
“I won a geography bee in elementary school, and ever since then it’s been a dream of mine to go on ‘Jeopardy,’ ” said brainiac Bryn Keating, who works as at an English-language school in Manhattan when she’s not boning up on ephemeral facts and figures.
Keating has been applying to test her trivia chops on the American Broadcasting Company quiz show for more than 10 years and finally got her first call-back last year — four days after she’d undergone grueling knee surgery.
She had to attend the audition in a wheelchair and doped up on pain killers, bumbling through a written test before acing a mock round of the show, she said.
“I don’t think I did very well on the written, because I was a little out of it,” she said. “But then you do a screen test with buzzers and I’m assuming I was charming.”
The show kept Keating’s test on file until June this year, when she finally got the call to compete in a pre-filmed episode in July.
Since then, she has enjoyed keeping her success — or lack thereof — a secret, especially as current contestant Seth Wilson is on a 12-game winning streak as of Tuesday night, and friends are dying to know if she faced off against him.
“I think it’s kind of fun to play with people and encourage them to watch,” Keating said. “There’s a guy who’s won a lot of episodes in a row, so everyone wants to know if I played against him. But I’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping a tight lip.”
“Jeopardy!” wasn’t Keating’s first quiz experience since her grade-school success — the jet-setting master of useless information spent two years in South Korea, where she started a trivia contest for other ex-pats.
“I wrote my own questions, so that was good prep,” she said.
Catch Keating’s first “Jeopardy!” appearance on Oct. 7 at 7 pm on ABC.
