Alex Trebek comments on SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy parodies

For many years, Will Ferrell mocked Alex Trebek for SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy parody skits, and Trebek has revealed exactly what he thought about them.

“Welcome back to Celebrity Jeopardy!”

Back during the “Will Ferrell years” of Saturday Night Live, the show’s recurring “Celebrity Jeopardy” segments were among its most popular. Though Darrell Hammond would frequently appear as contestant Sean Connery in most of the bits, different celebrities would be spoofed playing the game.

Of course, Ferrell himself always played the part of host Alex Trebek. What they all had in common is that it seemed Trebek was the only sane person on the set, with the celebrities always reaching new levels of stupidity. Though they weren’t necessarily making fun of Trebek, the skits were making a mockery of the whole show, so one can’t help but wonder… what did Trebek himself think about them?

In a new interview with the New York Post, Trebek was asked about the classic bits, and has opened up about them. You may be happy to learn that he apparently loves them just as much as the rest of us. From the interview:

"“It doesn’t bother me. If they’re spoofing you, poking fun at you or mentioning you it’s because you’re part of American pop culture, and that’s a good thing, I think. People are very polite. Nobody comes up to me or tries to insult me or test me to see if I’m as smart as I appear on TV, although that did happen quite a bit in the first couple of years, and for some reason that ended. I guess I’ve become such a part of their daily lives [that] they just take it for granted that I’m fairly well-read, fairly smart, and there’s no need to test me on that.”"

New episodes of Saturday Night Live air Saturdays at 11:30 PM EST on NBC.