We Need to Talk About How Linda Cardellini Won a Prize on 'The Price Is Right' in the '90s
If you're like us, you're currently obsessing over Netflix's Dead to Me. The more we read up about the star-studded cast, the more we want season two to happen. Linda Cardellini, who plays Judy on the show, is one of our favorites. Her character is heartfelt, mysterious, and oh-so-complex, and Judy is just the latest of Linda's many movie and TV roles. But we weren't familiar with her very first taste of life in the entertainment industry, when she appeared on an episode of The Price Is Right.
According to a Daily Show interview from 2013, she found herself competing on the popular game show when she was 19. Five years before she became Freaks and Geeks' beloved Lindsay Weir and in between her classes at Loyola Marymount University, she and her friends attended a taping.
She even admitted to kissing Bob Barker, and embracing a stranger on-stage.
“I just hugged her so much and was jumping up and down,” she told John Oliver in her Daily Show interview. “They tell you, if your name is called … ‘wave your hand’ so you’re doing what they ask you to do, but you look crazy waving your hands.”
Her big prize? A gas fireplace.
“I bid $1,000," she said in a 2017 NPR interview. “I was one of the first people called up to contestant’s row, which I have to say was maybe one of the most exciting things that has ever actually happened to me. Like, this business is very exciting, but nothing happens all at once.”
From what we can tell, the fireplace is still in her home today. She told John Oliver in 2013 that she hadn't gotten rid of the appliance, and had big plans for it too.
“I had kept it for years in the box in my garage, because it was the very first time I was on television," she said. "So once I was, ya know, really an actress, I was gonna put a plaque on it that said, ‘My first time on television’ and be very proud of it.”
She elaborated even further in May 2019, when she appeared on Live With Kelly and Ryan.
Even 20 years after, she hasn't gone back on her feelings about her big win.
“I have to say, everybody asked me what it was like when Green Book won the Oscar, and it was exactly that feeling,” she said. “But it was such adrenaline that I ran down and just hugged a stranger … I was one of the first people called but I was terrible at the game and so finally that sixth try (which is the last try), one of my friends was like, ‘It’s your last chance, Cardellini!’”
And while she proudly boasts about her gas fireplace, it actually wasn’t her first choice.
“I wanted a camper,” she said. “I was in college and I wanted a camper just to go with my friends.”
Sadly, we do not have a photo of this glorious, 20-year-old gas fireplace, but we will update you if we find one.
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