The TV gigs just keep coming for LeVar Burton. Famous for hosting Reading Rainbow and starring on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Burton will soon reprise his role from the latter for the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Picard. Burton will also lend his voice to a character in the Nancy Drew spinoff Tom Swift, coming to The CW in May. It has also been announced that he’d be hosting a new game show in the works based on the board game Trivial Pursuit.
Needless to say, Burton has been keeping pretty busy lately. He’ll have more to do as he’s just landed a role for the upcoming second season of the Starz series Blindspotting. Deadline reports that the actor is one of a handful of new recurring cast members to be introduced in season 2, coming into the show alongside Katlynn Simone Smith (Empire), Tamera Tomakili (Winning Time), and Tim Chantatangsu (Laid in America). Season 2 will also include guest appearances from rappers E-40, P-Lo, and Too $hort. They all join returning series stars including Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs, and Jasmine Cephas Jones.
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Blindspotting premiered on Starz in 2021 in June and was renewed for a second season in October. It serves as a spinoff of the 2018 movie of the same name, putting Ashley (Jones) into the central role. Set six months later, the series adaptation picks up with Ashley’s partner, Miles (Casal), gets locked up, causing Ashley and her son to move in with Miles’ family. The series performed incredibly well with critics, garnering a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
LeVar Burton Didn’t Need Jeopardy! After All
When one door closes, another one opens. Following the sad death of Alex Trebek in 2020, many fans had pushed for LeVar Burton to step in as the next Jeopardy! host. As a lifelong fan of the show, Burton was on board, and the fan campaign eventually led to him getting a brief shot at hosting the show as one of its many revolving guest hosts. Unfortunately, the experience was not what Burton had envisioned, and he was no longer interested in the job by the time he wrapped filming his episodes.
“I made it public that I wanted it for myself, that it made sense to me, and they were all about it,” Burton said of the situation on The Daily Show last year. “It made as much sense to them as it did to me. So, they wanted it for me as much as I wanted it. The crazy thing is, is that when you set your sights on something… They say be careful what you wish for because what I found out is that it wasn’t the thing that I wanted after all. What I wanted was to compete. I mean I wanted the job, but then when I didn’t get it, it was, like, well, okay, what’s next?”
Burton added, “The opportunities that have come my way as a result of not getting that gig, I couldn’t have dreamt it up. If you had given me a pen and paper, and said, ‘So, what do you want this to really look like, if it doesn’t include Jeopardy!?’ I wouldn’t have been able to.”
All’s well that ends well, as Burton will be popping up in plenty of other places on the small screen. He’ll still be getting a chance to host his own game show as well with the Trivial Pursuit series currently in the works. Maybe Jeopardy! did not work out, but it looks to have been for the best.
