Truly, the end of an era is upon Wheel of Fortune devotees with the arrival of Friday’s episode, which will be Pat Sajak’s final spin after 40+ years and over 8,000 episodes. The record-busting game-show frontman has already received an emotional farewell from co-host and letter turner extraordinaire Vanna White. In a video message to ABC viewers (you can watch it here), Sajak also expressed his pre-final-show farewell message:
“Well, the time has come to say goodbye. I have a few thanks and acknowledgments before I go, and I want to start with all of you watching out there. It’s been an incredible privilege to be invited into millions of homes night after night, year after year, decade after decade.”
What will Sajak do next? As Variety reports, he will be hitting the stage in a play at Honolulu’s Hawaii Theatre, where he will star in Prescription: Murder alongside KHON-TV Hawai’i news host Joe Moore. If that title sounds familiar to Columbo viewers, there’s a good reason:
The 1962 mystery-thriller “Prescription: Murder” was written by William Link and Richard Levinson, who turned the play into the TV series “Columbo.” The plot to “Prescription: Murder” was adapted for the “Columbo” first episode.
In the Hawaii Theatre version, Sajak will play “brilliant psychiatrist Roy Flemming, who hatches a plot with a perfect alibi to murder his neurotic and possessive wife.” Moore will play Lt. Columbo, “the seemingly bumbling detective who engages the psychiatrist in a cat-and-mouse battle of wits right up to the play’s surprising climax.”
Sajak and Moore have already teamed up for a few handfuls of plays over the decades, so they’ll roll into their next project quite naturally. Before Pat leaves his decades-long day job, however, he’s been getting weird before handing the keys over to Ryan Seacrest, who has been pretty frank about his poor spelling abilities, so it remains to be seen how awkward that will be, but at least it won’t be as awkward as this recent moment. You know it’s true.
Also, here’s the first in a series of Pat interview snippets conducted by his daughter, Maggie Sajak, who is giving quite the sendoff: “You made what could have been just hangman into a cultural phenomenon.”
(Via Variety)