Yahoo Finance First Trans Jeopardy! Contestant to Make Tournament of Champions Says She's 'Incredibly Grateful'
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Amy Schneider, who became the first transgender contestant to make it to Jeopardy!'s Tournament of Champions last week, is opening up about what it means to her to be on the show.
Schneider currently has a 10-show winning streak on the beloved game show. When she hit five wins last week, she qualified for the Tournament of Champions, an annual competition that includes all the best contestants from the year prior.
In an interview with ABC7, the Oakland, Calif. resident said hitting the five-win milestone was "a great feeling."
"Once I got to episodes three and four, I knew the fifth one was in sight," she said. "Once I got it, it was a great feeling, mostly because I was having fun and I didn't want to stop. By qualifying for the fifth one, I knew I would come back."
Amy Schneider from #Oakland is on @Jeopardy. Watch her compete at 7 on ABC7. pic.twitter.com/uo3gVlW1Sx
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) November 22, 2021
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Schneider shared that she was a longtime fan of Jeopardy!, and had interviewed for the show twice before the third one got her in.
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"My parents always had it on growing up," she told ABC. "There was never an extended period of time where I didn't watch it."
She also said she's "so incredibly grateful" to have the opportunity to be on the show.
"Hopefully I can send a positive message to the nerdy trans girl who wants to be on the show too," Schneider said.
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"I am from Ohio where the only trans people I thought of were drag queens or prostitutes," she added. "Seeing other trans women in a good spotlight inspired me to not be afraid of trying to compete in the thing I have always loved."
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Schneider further opened up about her inspiration to come on the show in a Jeopardy! interview after she won her 10th show on Tuesday.
"When I moved out to San Francisco, I was a little bit involved in the local comedy scene and there's a comedian up there, Natasha Muse, who's a trans woman, and growing up in the Midwest and in a conservative family, I had gotten kind of a distorted idea of what it meant to be trans," she said.
She continued, "And so seeing her being smart and funny and cool and just a normal person with a normal life and kids and everything like that, just showed me that it was something that I could possibly be and that really made a difference for me."
