As hard as it is to believe, Drew Carey has been the host of The Price is Right since 2007. It seems like it was just yesterday that Bob Barker was begging everyone to get your pets spayed and neutered. But Carey initially turned down the hosting gig. Or in his own words, “I said, f*ck no.”
Carey told People that he “just wanted to be able to do things that were fun and interesting instead of having a ‘job-job’ or something I had to do every day, because I just had, after being on The Drew Carey Show and everything, I was done with the idea of just being on a show forever.” The Drew Carey Show — which needs to be added to a streaming service — ran for nine seasons and wrapped up in 2004, so it’s understandable why Carey wanted to take a break.
But the dump truck full of money was too good to turn down.
“I knew how much money it was going to take for that to happen,” he said about buying a Major League Soccer team. “Then one of the show’s producers asked me what my favorite thing to do was. I go, ‘I love leaving big tips when I go to restaurants.’ ‘Well, if you work on The Price Is Right, you’ll be able to do that all the time for a living,’ they said. ‘Just give out things.’ That was the light bulb that went off in my head.” He continued:
“I could just make a living giving prizes to people and being around happy people all day. I met [my agent] at a steakhouse… And I go, ‘I think I want to be the host of The Price is Right.’ He shook my hand and goes, ‘Well, there’s your soccer money.’”
Carey is a man of his giving-things-away words: the working class hero picked up the tabs at Bob’s Big Boy writers during the strike.
(Via People)