‘Top of my bucket list’: Aurora man competes on TV trivia game show

DENVER ( KDVR ) — On Wednesday night, an Aurora technology program manager will test his knowledge on a television game show, “The Floor.” Among the 99 other contestants, he won’t be hard to miss.

“The Floor” is a trivia-based game show hosted by Rob Lowe. The show premiered earlier this year with 81 contestants racing to guess the names of pictures in mostly general knowledge categories ranging from anything between weather to ancient Egypt.

Now, the stakes are higher with 100 contestants — one of them being an Aurora resident, Ryan Barnett.

Barnett said he applied for the first season of “The Floor,” which consisted of about 100 questions asking about the applicant’s competitiveness and what game nights looked like at their home, but he never heard back. It wasn’t until after the show aired that he got a call asking if he was still interested.

“It’s just always been my dream to be on a game show, like literally top of my bucket list,” said Barnett.

Barnett said he went through a two-month interview process filled with more questions and playing the game via Zoom until he was finally cast, joining 99 other contestants from all over the country to film the show.

Preparing for the game show

Before Barnett went on set, he was sort of able to prepare.

Contestants sent in a list of categories they considered themselves to be experts in, and then the show chose from that list. A few days before the game, cast members received a list of 100 categories to study from.

“That last week, I was just pulling up lists of the top 100 of every category that was on there,” said Barnett. “You don’t know where you’re going to end up on the floor, you don’t know who you’re going to be challenging, so really, you couldn’t do a whole lot of studying until like the week before.”

While season two of “The Floor” debuts on Wednesday on FOX, there have been a few sneak peeks of the categories, which range from disco to world currencies.

The promotion videos also show a few first glances of Barnett.

“I’m the one in a really sparkly peacock shirt. So, it’s very easy to find me,” said Barnett.

In the first promo FOX released, Barnett can be seen in the video saying, “Bring it on” while he’s on stage.

While Barnett can’t give away too many other spoilers about the show, viewers won’t have to wait long for season two.

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