![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/7e08581f551827fd07b1d60c9c2404702c-Social-1080px-GameChangerS8-KateElliott-.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n The look of a man figuring out he\u2019s been set up by his friends and colleagues.
\n Photo: Kate Elliott\n <\/p>\n
The latest episode of Game Changer, Dropout\u2019s<\/a> comedy game show where the game changes every episode, begins with comedians Jacob Wysocki, Kimia Behoornia, Kurt Maloney, and Jeremy Culhane playing a seemingly straightforward version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. This is not unusual: Dropout has produced its own versions of popular game shows and reality competition franchises, such as The Bachelor<\/a>, Survivor<\/a>, and The Circle<\/a>. But what is unusual is what happens after Wysocki wins the opening challenge \u2014 drawing a \u201ccool cat\u201d \u2014 and steps center stage to begin answering trivia questions tailor-made to his interests and personal history. As his winnings pile up, Wysocki tells host and Dropout CEO Sam Reich<\/a>, \u201cI feel absolutely insane!\u201d<\/p>\n Contestants claiming to freak out during a Game Changer challenge is familiar enough \u2014 Wysocki previously expressed this sentiment while playing a demented version of Simon Says \u2014 considering the show\u2019s producers and crew make a game out of psyching out players as they try to figure out the rules and parameters of the game they\u2019re playing. It\u2019s hard to fault the comedians for having an additional level of paranoia when the show has produced episodes that conspire to set up a single person. Previous examples include \u201cYes or No,\u201d in which the only rule was that Brennan Lee Mulligan couldn\u2019t win<\/a>, or \u201cDon\u2019t Cry,\u201d an episode designed to celebrate<\/a> Jess Ross during a personally challenging year. Before long, it becomes clear that this is one of those Game Changers.<\/p>\n Wysocki has indeed been set up by his colleagues and friends: The game he\u2019s playing is designed to recognize his popularity among the Dropout audience and acknowledge the personal losses he\u2019s recently experienced. He gets every question correct, regardless of his answer; his longtime friends and collaborators are introduced into the game, and by the episode\u2019s emotional conclusion, he\u2019s won a prize total of $100,000. But even as he was winning \u201can astonishing amount of money,\u201d Wysocki couldn\u2019t lose sight of the fact that \u201cyou\u2019re also making a television show as a comedian, so you have to balance those two things.\u201d Speaking over Zoom before he performed at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, Wysocki broke down how he processed it all in the moment: \u201cYou\u2019re just letting the comedy training come and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n Can you walk me through the process of getting cast in an episode of Game Changer? I know Sam and the team go to great pains to make sure the cast members don\u2019t get tipped off about what\u2019s going on. When did you realize this wasn\u2019t a typical Game Changer episode but an episode designed around you? I had no information other than that it was going to be me, Kurt, Kimia, and Jeremy. Kurt and I have been friends for nearly two decades. Kimia and I have known each other since we were both 18. So I thought it was like they were playing with the fact that we were a historical group of friends, and it would be answering questions about our friendship. Then when we got to 15, 20,000 bucks, I was like, This is getting kind of crazy. When are we going to have somebody else go? Then it kept going, and it got to a point where I realized, Oh, nobody else is going, and it\u2019s just going to be me.<\/p>\n It was like watching Jim Carrey realize what\u2019s going on in The Truman Show. Besides the large amount of prize money, what element of the episode was the most meaningful to you? I watched a lot of groups get big \u2014 Broken Lizard, the State, Good Neighbor, the Whitest Kids You Know \u2014 and that was sort of maybe a blueprint for how you could get into Hollywood. They were all just buddies doing comedy, and they made their stuff, and eventually people paid them to make stuff. We came up thinking, All right, if we just keep making videos like all these other big influences, maybe we can do that too. At a certain point, life gets in the way, you grow up, and you realize, Oh, it\u2019s really hard being a group of dudes trying to make it in this town. For whatever reason, it didn\u2019t work out for us as a group, but it worked out for a lot of us as individuals. So it was particularly special making something together, being funny, and doing bits. For some of us, we haven\u2019t done that together in a long time and it felt really good.<\/p>\n The speech you gave about what the money would mean to you was disarmingly sincere. What was going through your mind at that moment? Sam does mention that it was a difficult year for you. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? You\u2019ve become popular online through Dropout. That helps Dropout, but it also helps you. However, you mention the need to have these boundaries, as you say, with strangers whose affection for you is intense and well-meaning, but they don\u2019t know you, and you don\u2019t know them. How has that been for you? How have you been since the filming of that episode? I still feel pretty insane about it when I really sit down and think about how I won a huge amount of money because of the work I\u2019ve put in and the relationships I\u2019ve built with the people who watch the place where I work. It\u2019s a celebration of that. And it\u2019s also a recognition that I had a pretty shit year and had to keep working. I got to keep working for the company. There were times when stuff with my mother got really intense, and I had to be like, \u201cI can\u2019t work today. I\u2019m sorry, but you\u2019re going to have to call Jeremy Culhane. You\u2019re going to have to bring in Jeremy.\u201d They were extremely kind and generous throughout that process.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The look of a man figuring out he\u2019s been set up by his friends and colleagues. Photo: Kate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,24028,5864,24030,24029,24031,5131,61],"class_list":["post-31044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chat-room","tag-comedy","tag-dropout","tag-game-changer","tag-jacob-wysocki","tag-streaming","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It\u2019s hard to speak about it holistically because each episode is so specific, and I think depending on the level of secrecy or mischief, probably requires different levels of communication. The very, very beginning is, you get an email from Sam: \u201cI would like you to be on this season of Game Changer. Here are some vague sentiments \u2014 how spicy are you willing to get?\u201d And so you\u2019re sort of giving soft consent on this email. Then a bunch of time goes by, you forget about it, and you show up to Dropout doing other jobs, wondering if it\u2019s secretly going to be a Game Changer.<\/p>\n
Sam said this thing to all of us before, where he was being vague, and he was like, \u201cRemember, it\u2019s got to be funny and everybody gets a turn.\u201d So when I was picked first to start answering these trivia questions that were lightly about my life, I was like, \u201cCool, I\u2019ll do two or three of these, I\u2019ll make a hundred bucks, I\u2019ll go sit down.\u201d I thought that was the game. We\u2019re going to take rotating turns, answering interpersonal questions about ourselves and maybe our friendship.<\/p>\n
I think it took me longer because there were two levels of acceptance. There\u2019s the level of acceptance that\u2019s, Oh, this episode is just about me. I\u2019m the driving force of the momentum and the comedy. I have to humbly accept one of the most righteous things that could ever happen to a person, which is a windfall. That\u2019s a lot of money for how I came up and the world that I grew up in.<\/p>\n
Being there with my buddies. I think my friend group is one of the best things about me. To have friends that you\u2019ve known for so long and that you\u2019ve grown up with, I think that\u2019s so special. The strongest bonds I have are all in one room celebrating this moment.<\/p>\n
That was probably the hardest part of it. You have this crazy experience, and then the ringleader goes, \u201cLand the backflip.\u201d That\u2019s the time when you want to be perfect because something perfect just happened to me. It was just a lot of pressure. How much do you want to share with an audience? There are things that happened in my life that are technically public, but I don\u2019t really share as my onscreen persona. Do I talk about my active grief and that there are people missing? You have to create a separation of church and state. So, you\u2019re threading so many different lines: Be funny, be gracious, be celebratory, be eloquent, be concise, and also self-edit so that I\u2019m not being too personal and I\u2019m not letting a bunch of great fans, but ultimately strangers, into the true intricacies of my life and my heart.<\/p>\n
I was actively grieving the loss of my mother and a member of our sketch group, Roger Garcia III. And yeah \u2014 they\u2019re there, but they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n
The infancy of the popularity is very novel. I don\u2019t think the human brain and body are designed to have unearned affection, which, I think parasocial relationships can sometimes feel that way. I came up in a world where I do a live show, I hear the live audience laugh \u2014 that\u2019s our contractual exchange. To get it after the fact is just something that you\u2019re not used to. It\u2019s sort of this compliment that exists in a vacuum. It\u2019s a process that I\u2019m still learning, and the people who are watching us are also learning.<\/p>\n
Awesome. My go-to joke is it\u2019s all gone. I spent it, I burned it. No, but I feel great. I think the craziest thing about it all is that the same evening, the Dodgers won the World Series. I\u2019m an L.A. boy. So we finished filming and then me and my friends go get a case of beer and we drove down to Echo Park and we\u2019re just partying in the streets and we\u2019re celebrating our city, but we\u2019re also celebrating what just happened. We got to go out and be like, \u201cYeah!\u201d and we didn\u2019t look crazy because everybody else was doing it. That makes it even more special and even more memorable. And the night ended with us watching a Los Angeles Metro bus explode<\/a>.<\/p>\n