Seaholm Graduate to Appear on 'Jeopardy'

There’s going to be a local face on America’s favorite quiz show Friday, as Rosanne Lightstone of Royal Oak competes to answer as many of Jeopardy host Alex Trebek’s questions correctly as possible.  

“I’ve watched the show for many years and one night they had an online tryout and I decided to register and take the test,” the 55-year-old quality engineer explained about how she started her Jeopardy journey. “After that, a couple months went by and I didn’t hear anything. Then I got an email saying I passed the test and could go to New York for an audition.”

Lightstone decided to do it. She said she was fortunate to get to go to the auditions because not everyone who passes the test gets invited. To prepare, she studied a website that had old shows on it and spent time going through the questions asked on them because she had no clue what topics would be asked at her auditions.

“I also found a website that previous contestants had put together with the topics they figured out were asked most frequently on the show,” she said. “Those topics were things like American presidents, state capitals and geography, so I made sure to study those.”

Lightstone graduated from Birmingham’s Seaholm High School and went on to earn bachelor’s degrees in art history and French from the University of Michigan and then to Wayne State for a master’s in art history. So she felt pretty confident with anything related to the arts.

“I wasn’t sure how I’d do with religion,” Lightstone said. “They tape five shows at once and on one of the shows before mine it came up, although one of the hardest questions I remember related to a Danish king.”

The whole experience seems distant for Lightstone because the actual taping happened six months ago in Los Angeles and the auditions themselves were more than a year ago. 

“The whole taping day was surreal, too, and went by in sort of a blur,” Lightstone said. “They tape each show in real time so it went by really quick.”  

Lightstone said the hardest part of being on Jeopardy was getting used to the buzzer.

“You had to time it right because if you buzz in before Alex finishes reading the question you get buzzed out, but you still have to make sure you buzz in before the other contestants,” she said.

One of Lightstone’s best memories was when she told Trebek, who she said is as nice and cordial in person as you see on television, where she was from.

“He told me he lived in Huntington Woods for a while years ago,” Lightstone said. “After the show was over, when all the contestants move into the center of the stage to talk with him, he told me he had an uncle who worked in downtown Detroit at the old Hudson’s.”  

Now that the show’s airing is today, Lightstone said her friends are thrilled and one is even throwing her a party to watch it. But she’s not even telling them how well she did.

“Everyone’s going to have to watch the show and find out,” Lightstone said.

The Royal Oak woman hasn’t ruled out trying out for other game shows, but she said Jeopardy has always been her favorite because it’s all about knowledge and she was very glad she got to be a part of it.

For anyone who practices forming their answers to questions in the form of a question and is considering trying out, Lightstone has this advice: “Do it! You never know how it will turn out. Just look what happened to me!”