As the new era of Wheel of Fortune continues with Ryan Seacrest as its freshman host for the 2025 TV schedule, Vanna White is still keeping the normalcy going. She signed a new contract in 2024 after a lengthy negotiation, but it’s still been an adjustment getting used to Seacrest. However, I just found out how many days a season she really puts in for her $10 million salary and my blood is now running thick with jealousy.
White has been co-hosting Wheel of Fortune since 1982, and has since become a not just a staple of the series along with former longtime host Pat Sajak, but a pop culture icon in general. After Sajak announced his retirement, it was unknown whether White would follow in his footsteps. Now that she’s sticking around, she opened up on the Elvis Duran Show on Z100 about what her work schedule really looks like, and it sounds like a dream. In her words:
We film about 34 days a year. That’s it. But six shows a day. Come on… You could feel bad for me.
Even though White still likely works behind the scenes for more than 34 days a year, including handling promos and/or preparing outfits, filming for just 34 days of the year really is pretty incredible for anyone viewed as a "TV star", especially considering how many episodes air each season.
Of course, filming six half-hour shows a day can be pretty draining, and those days are likely very long, since it's not as if the eps are filmed in clean-cut 30-minute chunks, and involve lots of stops and starts. All that said, however, filming for just over a month total sounds like a heavenly gig, and it’s even better knowing just how much White is making with her new contract.
Only filming for 34 days out of the year does actually make sense when it comes to Seacrest’s hosting abilities. The American Idol host received a bit of flak for making mistakes in his first year, as well as for not doing things exactly the way Sajak did. But he's a busy guy with a radio show and American Idol to host, among other things.
Even though he’s been filming six shows a day, the extended gap between production and airdates seemingly doesn't give him much time to look back and evaluate his performances to gauge what he could try to improve from show to show, which is probably why it’s taken a while to get used to him.
It's unknown if this has always been the case for Wheel of Fortune, though it's long been known that Jeopardy! films a full week of five episodes on Mondays. It might not sound easy to viewers, but it certainly seems to work. Even with all the interviews, planning, and other duties that don't happen on show-taping slots, 34 days with a massive salary would be pretty great, regardless of how long the shifts are.
Wheel of Fortune doesn’t have an end in sight, and for now, neither does Vanna White. It might help that she doesn’t film for too many days, even if those days are as long as ever. Since there are dozens and dozens of episodes of Wheel of Fortune that air weekly for weeks on end, it only makes sense that they film all of them pretty close together. And it sounds like White doesn’t seem to mind, at least not completely.
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