Jeopardy!’s Alex Trebek ‘looking forward to resuming production’ after COVID hiatus despite stage 4 cancer battle

JEOPARDY!’S Alex Trebek will be coming back to film more episodes of the game show despite the COVID hiatus and his stage 4 cancer battle. Friday night’s episode is the last of the pre-recorded ones before the show stopped filming because of the pandemic. A rep for Jeopardy! revealed that, despite fans worrying this might […]

JEOPARDY!’S Alex Trebek will be coming back to film more episodes of the game show despite the COVID hiatus and his stage 4 cancer battle.

Friday night’s episode is the last of the pre-recorded ones before the show stopped filming because of the pandemic.

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A rep for the show claimed that Alex Trebek is excited to come back[/caption]

A rep for Jeopardy! revealed that, despite fans worrying this might be the last night they’ll see any new episodes of Alex, they’ll get to see the longtime host again when they start filming soon.

The rep told TVLive: “Alex is looking forward to resuming production as soon as we are able to do so.

“He’s told us he wants to be one of the first shows back in production.”

Jeopardy!, much like all shows, stopped filming when the coronavirus pandemic swept the nation, but production had enough pre-recorded episodes to last until the beginning of summer.

Coleman-Rayner 2020

Fans worried they wouldn’t get to see Alex again after the hiatus due to his frail health[/caption]

The news comes after he was pictured in May looking frail when he was spotted outside his home amid his battle with pancreatic cancer.

The beloved game show host looked frail and had lost his hair, as he took out the trash to the curb of his Los Angeles home.

Alex’s hair was thinner than when he was last seen – presumably due to his chemotherapy treatments.

The father-of-two – who announced he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer in March last year – gave fans an update on his health as he passed the one-year survival mark.

ABC

Alex Trebek has been hosting Jeopardy! for 36 years[/caption]

Only 18 percent of patients diagnosed with the killer disease get past the milestone – and Alex admitted that the suffering caused by chemotherapy had made him consider giving up.

He said in a video posted on social media in March: “There were moments of great pain.

“Moments when certain bodily functions no longer functioned and some massive attacks of great depression that made me wonder if it was really worth fighting on.”

“But I brushed that aside very quickly, because that would have been a massive betrayal,” he added.

NBC / Jeopardy

Jeopardy! was one of the first shows to suspend production as they wanted to protest Alex[/caption]

Jeopardy! was one of the first television shows to suspend production over concerns about the health of contestants, staff and crew due to the risks of the host catching COVID-19.

It came after the show had previously decided not to tape in front of a live audience.

Alex and his wife Jean, 55, have been self-isolating at their Studio City mansion during the lockdown in California.

In an essay posted online, Jean – who Trebek recently described as his “soul mate” – said that she views the situation as a “much needed break.”

She wrote: “Although we are physically being confined to a limited amount of external outings and gatherings, we also have the great opportunity to truly be or invest in ourselves at a deeper level.”