Tom Bergeron is making a TV return more than five years after his exit from “Dancing with the Stars.” On Jan. 13, the Emmy-winning TV host posted to Instagram to tease his return to the popular game show “Hollywood Squares.”
“In two weeks (1/28), I’m back to Square one 😏 @hollywoodsquarescbs,” Bergeron, 70, captioned the post.
Bergeron hosted the revival of “Hollywood Squares” from 1998 to 2004, taking over for John Davidson as host. He also had long runs as host of “Dancing With the Stars” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” for several years at the same time, which made him one of the busiest TV hosts around.
Tom Bergeron Is Part of a Legacy Cast Lineup for ‘Hollywood Squares’
Bergeron won’t be a host on “Hollywood Squares”—that job goes to Nate Burleson. Instead, he will sit in one of the squares as a contestant.
According to a Paramount press release, Bergeron will appear in the Jan. 28 “Hollywood Squares” episode titled “The Legacy Show.” He will square off alongside Whitney Cummings, Tiffany Haddish, Arsenio Hall, Howie Mandel, Thomas Lennon, Leslie Jones, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on the CBS game show.
Tom Bergeron Was Originally Unsure If He Wanted to Host a Game Show
GettyBergeron had worked in radio, a guest host on “Good Morning America,” and on a morning show, “Breakfast Time,” before being called to test for “Hollywood Squares” nearly 30 years ago.
In an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, he revealed that “with ‘Breakfast [Time]’ going away and ‘Good Morning America’ not working out,” he received a call from his agent.
“My agent calls and says. ‘King World is doing ‘Hollywood Squares,’ and they want you to come out and test with Whoopi [Goldberg],” Bergeron recalled. “And I thought, you know, I don’t know. I mean, I like I love Whoopi, but I don’t know if I want to do a game show. And my agent…is used to me just being sort of you know, you’d think I’d want to be unemployed. … So I said, ‘Fine, it’s a trip to L.A. I had the same attitude when I auditioned for ‘Breakfast Time,’ that I don’t really want to go, but I’ll see friends and it’ll be fine. And so they flew me to L.A.”
Bergeron noted that when he met with Goldberg, who sat in the center square on the game show, they were “like kids in a candy store.”
“We were breaking each other up, and I didn’t think anything of it other than it was a fun afternoon with Whoopi Goldberg,” he said. “And I go back to my hotel and my agent calls, and said, ‘They want to they want to offer you the job.’”
“So I got the gig, and I had never done a game show before. So I kind of had to go to game show University,” he shared. “The first few ‘Hollywood Squares’ that I did were like a talk show where I was just so taken with all these [celebrities], I’m chatting with them so much, the two contestants are like. ‘We’d like to win something, you know?’”
Bergeron also described his time on “Hollywood Squares” as “six years of good times.”
Your political opinions should be kept to yourself. IS that why you were fired? You should be fired. It offended millions of fans of DWTS