'Millionaire' contestant goes home happy, but not wealthy

Tracy Zothner did not reach her goal of making at least $25,000 on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

Instead, the Apex native walked away with $1,000 after missing the $2,000 question.

The category was B-I-N-G-O.

The question was:

On a standard Bingo card, the 'Free Space' is in the column beneath what letter?

A: I

B: N

C: G

D: O

Zothner answered 'A', but the correct answer was 'B.'

Maybe you knew the answer, but it's not as easy as it looks on TV. Zothner says that the show films a week's worth of episodes in two days, and you spend a lot of time backstage waiting.

"You can't watch TV, you can't talk to your family or friends," she says. "They do feed you good food. You get an escort to the bathroom." Actually, there is a TV in the green room. "All you can watch are reruns of 'Millionaire,'" she says. That went on for 8 hours.

She got called at the end of the first day, and then the show shut things down after two questions (probably because of union hours), ensuring a second appearance.

The next day, she was back in the chair. While most of the studio is kept cool because of the heat from all the lights, the chair opposite Meredith Vieira earns its title. "It really is the hot seat," Zothner says. So on top of being nervous and tired, she was sweating too. "By the time I got in the hot seat, I was wondering whether I was going to make my flight. But I tried to be as relaxed as I could."

Now that the show has added a clock, eliminating all the time in the world to give an answer, there's a bit more pressure. And who wants to mess up on TV?

So Zothner says she blurted out her first thought. "If I had taken two more seconds to think about it...I did know it."

Still, she says, she had a great time. The trip to New York with her sister gave them some fun bonding time. And all that waiting had dividends too. "I spent so much time backstage with the other contestants, we became friends," Zothner says. "There were so many cool people." Her sister made friends too, with the families of the contestants.

And then there was Vieira, who Zothner says was 'sweet' and 'so nice.' When they were off air, Vieira spent the time chatting with Zothner, sharing that she has a brother who lives in Hendersonville and how she'd love to get to North Carolina.

A few days after she got home she got a card from Vieira thanking her for being on the show. "I think it was her handwriting, which made it very personal," Zothner says.

Zothner's not done with game shows either. She liked to apply her backlog of useless information on the TV version of 'Trivial Pursuit.'

(Image courtesy of Valleycrest Productions Ltd.)