LeVar Burton Promises Trivial Pursuit Won’t Make You Feel Dumb: A Freewheeling Chat With the Star Trek: TNG Vet About His New Hosting Gig
For TV watchers of a certain age — that age being their 40s and 50s — LeVar Burton has spent years as a constant, edifying, steadying presence in American pop culture.
Kunta Kinte in the Roots miniseries. Host of Reading Rainbow. Lt. Cmdr. Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Picard. Troy’s dream-come-true in Community. And now, emcee of The CW’s Trivial Pursuit, the latest point in his career as, as he puts it, “an itinerant storyteller.”
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“I love our show. I’m so proud of what we’ve done. And this really scratches the itch for me in terms of ‘LeVar Burton hosting a game show,'” he says, a nod to his much-discussed — and ultimately unfulfilled — desire to permanently assume Jeopardy!‘s host podium after Alex Trebek passed.
When Burton swings by TVLine’s New York offices to discuss his newest endeavor, the conversation starts with the new show (which is based on Hasbro’s classic board game and which airs Thursday at 9/8c on The CW) but soon branches into his other well-known TV roles and how what may at first seem like a setback can turn out to be the set-up for something great.
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“I’m the guy who has taken what has come my way and made the most of it,” he says in the video above. “And we’re stretching it out into my fifth decade in show business now.”
Press PLAY on the video above to watch our full conversation with Burton, then hit the comments with your thoughts.
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