TV Talk: Natrona Heights woman appears on 'Let's Make a Deal'

Sharon Cushey of Natrona Heights appeared on the April 23 edition of CBS’s “Let’s Make a Deal,” winning $800 and a designer purse valued at $1,700, but it was an eight-month journey from when she applied.

During the pandemic, “Let’s Make a Deal” has welcomed a mix of an in-studio audience and an at-home audience who Zoom in online.

Cushey saw a solicitation to be in the “Let’s Make a Deal” at-home audience on Facebook last August. While others wrote dissertations, she simply responded, “If you want to meet me, call me.”

In November, a representative from the show did just that. From there, Cushey went through three interviews and then had to wait eight weeks to hear if she’d be picked for the show. A day after the eight weeks was up, she got the call that she’d be in the at-home audience of three episodes that were to tape two days later.

Her eight-hour tape day Feb. 4 started at 12:15 p.m., beginning with two hours of learning the legalities surrounding her appearance, followed by sitting through the taping of three episodes.

“Do not do it on your cellphone,” Cushey advises other potential contestants. She couldn’t hear half of what was being said, and she could see only herself.

The first spot she picked to be in her house was too sunny, washing out her face, so producers told her to move to a less brightly lit location.

To get picked, it helps to be over-the-top to get yourself noticed, Cushey said, whether through a costume (she dressed in Valentine’s Day garb) or by actions. “I had whistles, and I was moving like one of them damn things outside a car dealership.”

But what actually got her noticed is when she got bored during commercial breaks and started walking around her chair singing the Muppet song “Mahna Mahna.”

“ ‘You have us howling in the control room,’ ” Cushey recalled hearing from the show representative. “I did not realize they were watching me the whole time.”

Cushey got a heads-up from the show rep that host Wayne Brady liked Cushey’s enthusiasm and he might pick her. The show rep confirmed her contestant details — age 60, retired hairdresser, had a heart attack in her salon and a client kept her calm until the ambulance arrived — and said Brady would talk about them. But when Brady called on Cushey, he went in an entirely different direction.

Brady asked, “What’s Natrona Heights known for?”

Cushey blanked. Dead silence followed. Then she blurted out, “Well, for me!”

Brady started making fun of the town name — “So you’re from Nitrous Oxide?” — and she tried to respond, but the sound was bad, there was a delay, so all that banter did not make it into the episode.

Cushey played a game where she had to choose five of 10 tokens that had a dollar amount on each of them. If her five tokens added up to $1,000, she’d win $10,000.

Cushey couldn’t hear any of the instructions for the game so she muddled through as best she could.

“I’m glad how they edited it,” she said. “I was really afraid I would look like an idiot, but I was very happy with how it came out.”

Midway through, Brady began offering Cushey lower dollar amounts, first $600 and then $800, plus the purse. She took the last deal. Brady asked what number she would have picked and then looked underneath it: She would have made it to $1,000 and gotten the $10,000. But Cushey isn’t upset by her choice.

“They tell you when they’re going through the legalities that you will have nightmares about your decision,” Cushey said. “They say don’t beat yourself up. Just go out and have fun and if Wayne offers you $500 and you can use it, then walk away and take the winnings. They prod you towards that.”

Cushey said the show will pull out taxes for the value of her winnings before they direct deposit a check and send the purse.

“I don’t need a $1,700 purse,” she said, noting she already has a plan to sell it to a local charity where it will be part of a raffle.

“It was just fun,” Cushey said of her game show experience, “but mind-numbing by the time you were done.”