They say when one door closes, another opens. That certainly seems to be the case for LeVar Burton, who was able to return to his role as the beloved Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: Picard season 3 because he didn’t get the hosting job on Jeopardy. He tells People that the opportunity also gave him a chance to work with his daughter, Mica Burton.
After Alex Trebek’s death in 2020, scores of Jeopardy fans signed petitions to have Burton take over as the host of the popular game show. It would have been a natural fit for Burton, who hosted the popular children’s show Reading Rainbow from 1983 to 2006.
When he didn’t land the job, Burton was disappointed. But there was a silver lining. “Your failures are more important than your successes because you learn more from them,” Burton said. “Everything happens for a reason, and it’s all purposeful and perfect. So where’s the perfection in ‘I didn’t get what I wanted’? I discovered that [the Jeopardy job] wasn’t supposed to be mine, but the process that I went through led me to exactly where I needed to be.”
Where he needed to be, as it turns out, is back with his Star Trek: The Next Generation family in the third season of Star Trek: Picard season 3. The gang's back together in the final season of the Paramount Plus series, and with only a few episodes left it already has fans clamoring for more.
Had he landed the Jeopardy hosting job, his schedule wouldn’t have allowed for him to reprise the role of Geordi LaForge, nor would it have given him a chance to work with his daughter, Mica Burton, who plays one of Geordi’s daughters in the show.
Burton’s daughter grew up with her father’s TNG friends in her life; Burton is so close to the cast that Brent Spiner was his best man and Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes and Patrick Stewart were groomsmen at his 1992 wedding. “Mica’s grown up with them all,” he said. “We have spent so much time with each other.”
The opportunity to continue his TNG role and to work with his daughter while also championing access to reading for all kids has been invaluable. He’s the executive producer of a new documentary, The Right to Read, which “frames early childhood literacy as a civil rights issue. That’s what Reading Rainbow was all about: fostering a love of the written word,” Burton said. “I’m focusing my attention now on giving kids the tools they need to learn how to read.”
In the end, it looks like everything is exactly how it should be for Burton. And he seems to think the same. “I’m ecstatic that things have worked out the way they have.”
