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Google PlayOne of the contestants from a recent episode of Wheel of Fortune spoke with TMZ after a clip of the trio struggling to solve the puzzle went viral.
After buying the vowel “O,” Laura was confident that she could solve the puzzle featuring the popular phrase, “Another feather in your cap.” Instead of cap, she said, “Hat,” which was close but not exactly correct. Christopher Coleman took over, spun the wheel, and picked “G,” but that was also wrong. Laura got another shot and said guessed that the final word was “lap.” Even Vanna White thought Laura would get it right, judging from her brief stutter step towards the board.
Christopher went with the letter “D” on the second try, but no dice. After Laura struck out for a third time, and Coleman landed on “Bankrupt,” Thomas finally got a turn and delivered the right answer.
In the days that followed, people have been incredibly mean to Christopher and Laura on social media. Now, Coleman would like to tell his side of the story. “This is an idiom I learned when I was six or seven years old, but I haven’t heard it in over 30 years. So, it’s been a while for me since I heard it,” he explained.
Coleman echoed a sentiment that has been said time and time again by former contestants who found themselves in this exact situation. “You are also under a lot of scrutiny and pressure when you’re in production,” he said. “A lot of people are sitting at home on the comfort of their own couch, yelling and screaming at the television, but we [the contestants] are the ones in the moment, in production and in real time, trying to guess and figure out what this puzzle is.”
“You go up there. Half of you don’t even have public speaking skills,” he continued. “You go on ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and go into the shoes of where we were standing. And then it will be a whole another conversation when they are trending and making donkeys of themselves.”
Coleman, who considered being a Wheel of Fortune contestant to be a “lifelong dream,” is asking the public to practice “more empathy and a little more grace and understanding.” Even host Pat Sajak came to their defense, explaining how a situation like theirs can spiral out of control the way that it did.
