Jane Lynch Previews NBC’s Revived WEAKEST LINK

Jane Lynch is no stranger to hosting on television, whether it’s HOLLYWOOD GAME NIGHT (which has been running since 2013) or the Primetime Emmy Awards (in 2011), but she’s trying something new: taking center stage with NBC’s revival of WEAKEST LINK, which debuts Tuesday, September 29 at 8/7c.

The quiz show—which debuted internationally in 2000, before coming to the U.S.in 2001—follows eight contestants (who don’t know each other), who work together to build their prize total by answering consecutive questions…with one contestant voted out each round.

“It’s a very rigid format, which I love about it and I love the way [original host] Anne Robinson navigated that,” Lynch explains in the video below. “I took my cue from how she hosted this show.”

After spending six seasons hosting HGN—whose relatively loose environment includes celebrity participants that are often Lynch’s friends and former co-stars, plus rotating games— the shift to WEAKEST LINK was a bit of an adjustment.

“The first couple of shows, I was a little too chatty with them…between setups,” Lynch admits. “[I got the note,] ‘Stop talking. Stop.’ And then I would say things, and standards and practice would be like, ‘It looks like you’re favoring that person.’ I just had to stop small talking…it became a very kind of formal thing. [So,] we have our moments where I will say something to them, we’ll converse back and forth a little bit, and it’s always the end result of that is some kind of quip or a slap across the face, metaphorically.”

Of course, the iconic parting shot, “You are the weakest link. Goodbye!” is a part of the revival…though Lynch was careful to not obsess about her delivery too much.

“By the time I got to shooting it, I had said it many times [in our Zoom rehearsals],” she says. “And I didn’t think about it—I knew if I thought about it, I’d screw myself up and I’d probably get paralyzed in some way. So I didn’t think about it. And it was no more important than any other part of the game, so hopefully it is quite organic and always dismissive and cold and brutal.”

Watch the video for more from Lynch, including filming the series without an audience, updates for 2020, and more…

WEAKEST LINK, Series Premiere, Tuesday, September 29, 8/7c, NBC

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