‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’: Aisha Tyler Dishes on Drew Carey & Jimmy Kimmel Snafu
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Disney/Christopher Willard
DREW CAREY, AISHA TYLER
Aisha Tyler and Drew Carey brought the laughs on the season premiere of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? But did they win $1 million for their chosen charities?
Host Jimmy Kimmel shared that he didn’t know they were pals, and Carey revealed they had the same manager for a while, and they both hosted Whose Line Is It Anyway? Tyler said that they are like “brother and sister from another mother.”
The pair seemed to be in good hands as Carey had been on Millionaire before and won $500,000. The comedians flew through the first few questions, but once they got to the $32,000 question, they got tripped up.
The question was “With a whopping 11, which of these singers has more number-one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 than the other three combined?” The choices were Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Tina Turner, or Britney Spears.
Carey and Tyler both deliberated for several minutes whether it was Whitney or Britney. They decided to use one of their four lifelines and asked the audience. The audience chose Britney Spears, which the comedians were leaning toward, since she is still alive to make music.
However, the correct answer was Whitney Houston. The crowd groaned after they got it wrong, despite leading the pair astray. They went home with $32,000 for their chosen charities. “Well, we did know it was one of the two of them!” Tyler said.
“You guys were great! I’m so sorry that that happened. I blame them, by the way,” Jimmy Kimmel said, pointing towards the audience.
“I think we talked them into it,” Carey admitted.
“I do too!” Tyler said.
Kimmel shared that they should have asked him because he knew the correct answer. As their game ended, Tyler told The Price Is Right host, “We should have listened to him! We should have asked him!” One of the lifelines they still had left was Ask The Host.
TV Insider spoke with Aisha Tyler about the pair’s time on the game show, her friendship with Drew Carey, and their snafu of not asking Kimmel for help instead of getting bad advice from the audience.
Disney/Christopher Willard
What made you want to be on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Oh, I mean, I typically, if I have the time, I say yes to this stuff because of the charity component. I think that’s really the motivator for me. I know the show has been on for a long time, and it’s a big fan favorite. People love the show. For me, it’s always, can I both raise some money for a favorite charity and then also amplify their message, and then, obviously, the added bonus was that I was gonna get to do it with Drew, who’s an old friend of mine.
Did you and Drew Carey get to pick each other, or were you just assigned to it? Or because you were friends, you were just like, ‘let’s do this together.’
I mean, Drew and the show reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to do it. I don’t think they match you with people. I think it’s really like they have an interest and they go, ‘Hey, do you want to do it with a friend?’ And then, Drew reached out to me, and obviously, we have something very specific in common, which is that we both hosted Whose Line, but we’ve known each other through the stand-up world for 20 years.
Did you feel pressure going in since Drew was on the show before? Or do you think that made you feel more comfortable because he had experience?
Not really. I’ve done a fair number of charity game shows, so I don’t feel a lot of pressure. And then I, having hosted Whose Line, having done a lot of live television, there’s the big thing with these things, is that you never know what kind of a question you’re going to get. I felt super prepared, and Drew and I have a kind of a similar intellectual disposition. I guess we both do a lot of reading, so we felt really confident. Going in, you never know when you’re going to be thrown a curveball.
Did you think that the show was going to be easy or hard? And what kind of questions were you hoping not to get? What category?
I mean, I said right off the top, I’m not a pop culture maven. If you want to ask me about science or outer space, politics or geography, or history, I’m pretty great, but I’m just not a pop culture person. I have the same 10 songs on my phone that I listen to over and over again. I don’t really have the time to be immersed in pop culture. And it’s funny because I think we’re in a kind of cultural temper now, where everybody thinks everybody knows everything about everything, but I hear about a song, in a commercial, and then I’m like, ‘Oh, that sounds nice.’ And then I listen to that song for 10 years. So, that’s just not my area of expertise, and it never has been.
You appropriately then went out on the Whitney Houston question, which was music/pop culture. Did you think that question would be so tough, especially with how iconic Whitney Houston is?
I feel like we used our best judgment on that question. And it was really, I’m not gonna say it was a trick question, but it felt tricky because it was really very much like we lost Whitney a while ago, and who is still alive and still making hits? And it felt like Britney has just been this pop culture fixture for such a long time. So, to me, we kind of used reason to answer that question, and we also used a lifeline. So, it was a bummer, because I felt like we had, kind of two elements that we were using to answer that question. And I think it’s just the luck of the draw, just occasionally you’re going to get a question that you don’t know. Now, in retrospect, honestly. We probably should have used Jimmy, because it was clear that he knew something about the question that we didn’t, and we should have leaned into that, but we wanted to save him for later in the game. And I think that we were like,’ Oh yeah, we’ll go to the audience. People know stuff about this.’ The audience seems super confident. They were like, ‘Oh yeah, absolutely. Ask us.’ And I was like, ‘You guys have let us down. You betrayed us.’ *laughs* But it was a really logical answer to that question. And I also think that Drew and I thought we might have talked the audience into answering the way that we were answering, because we were doing a lot of out-loud reasoning about why we thought that Britney might have had more hits than Whitney. I have a really good friend who’s a Whitney obsessive, and he is never going to forgive me.
Would you want to do any other game shows, like The Price Is Right with Drew?
Oh, well, I love Drew. I don’t know, do they do a celebrity Price is Right? I also obviously, really, really close with Wayne Brady, who does Let’s Make a Deal. I just feel like Drew, Wayne, and I are like this, funny, little, strange set of comedy triplets. So yeah, I mean, I would go on their shows, if they ask, because they’re just, great, great friends of mine, and I want to support them. And anytime that there’s a charity opportunity, that’s really what motivates me. I feel like the best, most meaningful part of being in this business is the opportunity to do what you can on behalf of other people. So, it’s not so much the game show as if I can help other people. So yeah, if there’s ever an opportunity to raise money for charity again in the future, I feel like every time they ask me what charity I want to play for, I’m like, ‘Oh, God. I mean it’s so hard to pick one, and there’s so much work to be done, and there’s so many people that need help.’ So yes, if there’s a chance to raise money for people, then I’ll absolutely be back out there and hopefully see. And the thing is, now I’ll go away, and I’ll study a bunch of pop culture, and then they’ll be asking about molecular biology, and I’ll be like, ‘See guys?’ like, you can’t, you never know. I have like 17 other jobs. I can’t spend all my time reading the internet.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Wednesdays, 8/7c, ABC, streams next day on Hulu
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