“So happy to be here with you,” Ryan Seacrest told Vanna White. “Let’s have fun.” The two stepped out onto a new set on Monday night, and “Wheel of Fortune” began season 42 with its first new host in decades.
The contestants gave Seacrest a warm greeting. He turned to the studio audience and the viewers at home, and spoke about what the job meant to him. “Hosting ‘Wheel of Fortune’ is a dream job,” he said. He had been a fan since boyhood, he added, watching with his family in Atlanta, and he knew the show had been in living rooms for the past 40 years.
He ended the speech on a note of respect. “I also know I’ve got some very big shoes to fill,” he said, and the game began.
A job announced a year earlier
The show named Seacrest as its new host in June 2023, shortly after Pat Sajak said he would step down. Sajak said goodbye on June 7 after 43 years in the chair. In the weeks before the premiere, Seacrest posted on Instagram about how he and White were getting ready.
His approach was to leave the show alone. In an interview with “Good Morning America” the week before, he said the main lesson he had learned was “don’t make any changes.”
“This show works,” he said. “All I need to do is keep it moving. All we need to do is have fun every night.”
When the episode ended, White asked how he felt. “I feel like we did one,” Seacrest said. “We got one under our belt.” He had one hope for the night, he added: that every contestant would go home with some money.
