SC lawyer to appear on Jeopardy. Here’s when to watch & how she made it on the show

At the last family dinner with her grandmother, Valerie Fulton remembers her grandmother getting up from a table full of people and saying, “I don’t want to miss Jeopardy.”

That’s the role the long-time game show played in her life and so it was nothing less than wonderful for Fulton to get to be on the show, which airs Friday.

A Greenville attorney, Fulton said she and her boyfriend were watching the show one night when he said she should take the test to be on the show.

“It happened very quickly,” she said.

Next she knew she and a cousin were on their way to Los Angeles for filming. It was the first time she was on a quiz show since she was on quiz bowl at Greenville Middle School.

“Jeopardy has been a ritual forever,” she said.

The show films 10 shows over two days. And when not filming contestants are in the green room without their phones.

“There was a lot of camaraderie,” she said.

She feared she’d be the odd one out amid a bunch of smart people and they certainly were. Her knack for trivia and legal mind kept her in the mix. The other contestant on Friday is a professor of tree fruit physiology at Michigan State University. The champion on that day is not announced ahead of time.

Nor is Fulton saying who won.

She is a partner at Fulton and Barr personal injury law firm started by her mother, Johnnie Sue Fulton, who died in 2021, and Andrew Barr.

Johnnie Sue Fulton practiced law for 40 years in Upstate South Carolina, first as a public defender, and then as a plaintiff’s attorney.

Valerie Fulton, a graduate of Wofford College and Washington and Lee Law School, has worked for the firm since 2019.

Fulton said she wore a pin of hers on the show that is shaped like a lizard.

“It was a gift from my dad that she thought she’d lost, so she secretly bought another one,” Fulton said. “One night, she asked him to put it back into her jewelry box where he immediately saw the other, “lost” pin. He asked her if they’d started reproducing.”

Fulton said her Jeopardy jaunt was the first time she had been to California.

“The weather was great. The Mexican food was great,” she said.

Wonderful is a word that keeps coming up when she talks about the experience.

Not so wonderful was the buzzer.

“It’s much harder than you think,” she said, and laughed.

Jeopardy airs at 7:30 p.m. Friday on WOLO-TV (ABC Columbia) and WLOS (ABC 13) in Greenville.