‘The Quiz With Balls’: A Game Show With Heart, Smarts, Humor and Really Big Balls

© 2024 FOX Media LLC. Credit: Kelly Gardner/FOX.

Think of it as Family Feud meets Wipeout by way of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Actor and comedian Jay Pharoah (Saturday Night Live) hosts FOX’s The Quiz With Balls (Tuesdays at 9pm ET/PT beginning May 28), a new game show based on a Dutch format. Two teams answer multiple-choice trivia questions, with each answer corresponding to a position on a platform above a pool of water. The player stands on that position, with a pool of water in front of them and a giant ball suspended at the top of a ramp behind them. A correct answer stops the rolling ball at the bottom of the ramp. A wrong answer results in the ball knocking the player into the pool.

As more players take a splash, the questions get harder. Teams bank prize money the longer they stay dry until one player competes in the final round for a $100,000 grand prize.

“The show’s got heart, the show’s got knowledge and it’s funny,” Pharoah says. “When you take all those ingredients and you mix them together, you’ve got a cake that’s going to last you a while.”

There are some big personalities to go with the big balls. “This one family, they had all acrobats,” Pharoah says. “They were in shape, they were like a wrestling, athletic family. One of the girls, she did a flip into the pool. It was crazy! I was like ‘What the hell?’ When the ball came, it was like it was choreographed. What is this, WWE? What is going on? It’s so much fun.”

Pharoah’s excited for viewers to witness some wildly unexpected moments, like when a contestant accidentally lost her balance. “She got the answer right, but she was so busy looking at her other family members and looking at what their answers were that she fell into the pool,” he says. “That’s what you get for being nosy!”