During Sunday night’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” episode, celebrity contestant David Chang made a confession:
“I was a terrible student,” he said. “That’s why I became a chef.”
Turns out he’s a smart man with good deductive reasoning skills and smart friends. Most important, he’s a gambler who was willing to risk a ton of money on a hunch.
With the correct answer of “Benjamin Harrison,” Chang became the first celebrity to win $1 million on the show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.
The money will go to the Southern Smoke Foundation, a Houston-based emergency relief fund founded in 2017 that “provides funding to individuals in the food and beverage industry who are in crisis.”
Chang, a chef and TV host who founded the acclaimed global restaurant group Momofuku, answered a number of questions correctly with help from friend Alan Yang, a Hollywood director, and then used his “phone a friend” lifeline for an assist with the million-dollar brain-teaser.
The question — “Although he and his wife never touched a light switch for fear of being shocked, who was the first president to have electricity in the White House?” — came with four choices, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Chester A. Arthur or Andrew Johnson.
Chang’s friend Mina Kimes, an NFL analyst for ESPN, did some fast thinking and offered not a sure-fire answer but a guess: “It’s probably Harrison.”
An anguished Chang debated whether to take a chance on that answer.
“She’s much smarter than I am in so many facets. … I’m a gambling man and shame on me if I this is wrong. But I’m doing this because having a million dollars at this moment is a game-changer for many, many families.”
Then he debated some more and finally decided it was more important to “put a spotlight on the industry in need.”
“I’m going to let my stupid confidence, bravado, win out. I’m going to go Final Answer, B, Benjamin Harrison.”
After the requisite pause for dramatic effect, Kimmel announced: “David Chang, your metallic testicles just won you a million dollars for your charity.”
In the history of the show from the Regis Philbin era to now, Kimmel said, several celebrities have won $500,000 — including Julie Bowen, Drew Carey, Anderson Cooper, Lauren Lapkus, Norm MacDonald and Rosie O’Donnell — but none had ever ventured a guess on the final question.
