Highlights
- Ben Affleck and “Jeopardy!” champ Jamie Ding won $1 million on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
- A turkey-pardon question decided it — Jimmy Kimmel’s reluctant lifeline guess made the call.
- The prize goes to Affleck’s Eastern Congo Initiative, a year after Matt Damon’s win.
Ben Affleck is a millionaire — for charity, anyway.
The Oscar winner and Jeopardy! super champion Jamie Ding took the top prize on Wednesday night’s episode of ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, banking one million dollars for Affleck’s Eastern Congo Initiative.
The pair walked in with a cushion. They had already locked in $250,000 during last week’s season premiere, leaving two questions between them and the check.
The $500,000 question sent them to the Wright brothers and a famously wrong newspaper prediction — a bit of trivia Affleck happened to have filed away from his own tangles with the press.
JAMIE DING, BEN AFFLECK, JIMMY KIMMEL
Then came the turkeys.
The final question asked which of four names had never belonged to a bird pardoned by a U.S. president: Peanut Butter & Jelly, Tater & Tot, Mac & Cheese, or Spaghetti & Meatball.
Affleck’s reaction to the options was pure disbelief. Neither he nor Ding had a clue.
They burned the “Ask the Host” lifeline on Jimmy Kimmel, who reluctantly floated Spaghetti & Meatball — without much conviction.
So they went to the phone, dialing Ding’s longtime trivia partner Stephen Morrison, whom Ding pitched to Kimmel as a Harvard-educated friend he’d been through it all with, “just like Ben and Matt.”
Morrison passed. The clock ran out.
“Well, he is like Matt,” Kimmel cracked.
JAMIE DING, BEN AFFLECK, JIMMY KIMMEL
That left Affleck and Ding with nothing but the host’s shrug — and Affleck decided that was enough.
“I would bet on Jimmy,” the “Air” director told his partner.
Ding locked in Spaghetti & Meatball. The room went quiet.
“I have such a stomach ache right now,” Kimmel said as the pause stretched on and Affleck scanned the studio in bewilderment.
Then the drum roll hit. The answer was right. The two leapt up, hugged, and disappeared into confetti as Kimmel handed over an oversized $1 million check.
The money goes to the Eastern Congo Initiative, the grant-making and advocacy nonprofit Affleck co-founded with entrepreneur Whitney Williams in 2009 to support communities “severely impacted by a very traumatic war.”
The timing is almost too good. Affleck’s win lands roughly one year after Good Will Hunting co-star and lifelong pal Matt Damon claimed the same $1 million alongside Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings, playing for Water.org.
Kimmel, a professional Damon antagonist, could not let it slide.
“So much smarter than Matt,” he joked.
Ding, for his part, arrived with credentials. The New Jersey state government employee — dubbed “the nicest Jeopardy! champion of all time” — racked up $882,605 across 31 straight wins this past spring, making him the show’s fifth-highest earner behind Jennings, James Holzhauer, Matt Amodio and Amy Schneider.
Kimmel told Variety in July that Affleck didn’t initially realize he’d been paired with a ringer.
“He’s very smart, that Ben Affleck,” the host added.
Affleck and Ding are only the fifth act to conquer the million-dollar question since Kimmel took over hosting duties in April 2020, following David Chang in 2020, Ike and Alan Barinholtz in 2024, and Damon and Jennings and The Office duo Oscar Nuñez and Kate Flannery in 2025.
