Alex Trebeck, Pat Sajak and Ty Treadway?
They are the hosts of the three game shows still on the air that were created by the late Merv Griffin. While Alex Trebeck of “Jeopardy” and Pat Sajack of “Wheel of Fortune” are game show institutions, Ty is the new kid on the block as the host of “Merv Griffin’s Crosswords.”
“It’s an amazing and surreal experience,” Ty told me recently. “I hope I can live up to what they’ve done. The beauty of both of them is they make it look so easy when I know it’s not.”
Just about four months before he died, Griffin personally chose the 40-year-old Treadway for the gig and his selection was definitely a decision to appeal to younger viewers.
“Actually I’m 85,” Ty joked. “I just look younger. It’s all the botox.”
He’s still amazed at how quickly he landed a job that he felt was a real longshot.
“I thought I was going to have to go through 20 or 30 levels of executives before I ever got a glimpse of the man behind the curtain himself. As fate would have it, I walked into that very first meeting on March 2 and the first hand that reached out to shake mine was Merv himself...I couldn’t feel any more honored or privileged to hopefully carry the torch for his legacy.”
Ty gained fame on the ABC soap “One Life to Live” in 2000 and after his character was killed off a year later, he returned as his nicer twin brother. He spent three more years on the show until his character went insane!
The soap exposure led to his co-hosting “Soap Talk” on the Soapnet cable network with Lisa Rinna. They had a four year run and were nominated for Emmys three of those years.
Does he miss being a soap stud?
“What do you mean? I’m still a soap stud! (laughs). There are things that you miss about it, there are things that you don’t miss. You don’t miss having to take your shirt off every five seconds and I’m really glad I have a job that lets me use my other assets such as my brain. But occasionally I think, well, maybe I’ll take my shirt off for ‘Crosswords.’ No, I’m kidding. You get to eat a little bit, you get to enjoy life a little bit more. You don’t always have to be on your toes workout-wise.”
But he does he miss acting sometimes.
“Yeah, because acting is very much about yourself, you’re in the spotlight, you are the instrument and you only have yourself to work with. Hosting, a lot of it is about the other person. Their number one job is to make people feel comfortable and bring out the best in them while entertaining people in the downtime in between."