English Professor Lands on Game Show, Demonstrates Resiliency

Angela Warfield wants to talk about it. She wants to tell you every detail. She wants you to know why the experience changed her life.

But she’s not allowed.

Warfield, PhD, professor of English with St. Louis Community College, spent time in early August filming the second season of FOX’s “The Floor.” Hosted by Rob Lowe, 100 contestants compete in general trivia through a series of head-to-head duals for a winner-take-all prize of $250,000.

Warfield, one of those 100 contestants, walked away with the top prize. Or maybe she didn’t. She can’t say.

“I don’t know what I can say and can’t say,” she said when asked how long it took to film the show. “I will say the show filmed for six days. I can’t say I filmed for six days because that gives away my trajectory.”

The season debuts Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. on Fox-2 in St. Louis and Warfield does reveal she’ll get plenty of airtime on the premier.

She gained a love for game shows as a child when she and her grandmother would watch “Password,” “The Price is Right,” “Match Game,” and other classics.

She wanted to be a contestant not only because she loves the genre but also for more personal reasons. Warfield lives with a high level of anxiety and knew the process of getting selected and, more so, competing on a show would force her into an uncomfortable environment. That’s what she wanted.

“There’s a quote I love that says: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone,’” she said. “I wanted a challenge.”

Filmed in the same Ireland-based soundstage as the movie “Braveheart,” “The Floor” contestants didn’t have much freedom. They filmed for about 10 hours a day, most of the time required to stand on footprints on the stage floor. When they did return to the hotel, they didn’t get to share a room with anybody, meaning Warfield’s boyfriend and daughter, who traveled with her, had to stay elsewhere. They got little time together.

Each day, Warfield and the other contestants left their hotel for the studio packed to go home. Once eliminated, a contestant immediately was taken from the studio, directly to a new hotel and flown home the next day. There was no opportunity to say goodbye to the people with whom they had grown close during the filming.

Emotionally, it was a lot.

She faced a different environment, in a different country, with hundreds of strangers, under the immense pressure of the game itself, all on camera. Normally, it would have been more than she could handle, and yet…

“I was having the time of my life,” she said. “I lived a completely anxiety-free week. By the grace of God, there was just this sense all the time of feeling at complete peace and completely myself, like the most authentic human I could be.”

Just getting on a game show requires resilience.

The process is long and arduous. For Warfield, about three years ago, she joined social media groups for people who like and/or want to be on game shows. From there, she learned more about new shows looking for contestants and other casting calls. She also learned about shows to avoid and shows to pursue.

That’s the easy part. The process from the moment someone wants on a show to when they’re selected is anything but linear.

“It’s several rings of hell and Dante’s Inferno, if I’m being honest,” she said with a laugh.

There’s the initial application. If that gets past screening, they ask for a video of you proving your general likability, enthusiastic personality and photogenic nature. If that one-minute clip is good enough, a casting agent will call to chat for a bit, you know, just to see if you’re worthy of moving forward in the process.

If you’ve not yet annoyed the wrong person, you do a video call so the casting folks can see your face and gauge your personality. And if you make it this far, well, you’ve got three more steps to go: a mock game that only hints at what show you’re auditioning for, one more audition, and then, if you are lucky, you get cast.

All along, despite the pressure to perform to get selected, Warfield stayed true to herself.

“I realized, I have to be who I am, because I can’t sustain a farce, it would be ridiculous, inauthentic and weird,” she said. “I went into every audition, this is who I am, this is what I got. I’m a little snarky. I’m really sarcastic. I think I have a general witticism about me, but I am not jazz hands, hamming it up for people.”

“If that’s what they wanted, they would have to choose somebody else.”

That authenticity is what makes it hard for Warfield not to tell everyone who asks everything about her experience. She really wants to. But she can’t.

So, if you want to know how she did and how much she won, you’ll have to tune in every Wednesday until she’s eliminated. If, of course, she ever was.