Stressed from a paper he was working on, Lawrenzo Howell GS — a Ph.D. student in sociology — was scrolling through Instagram when he saw an ad to compete on the TV trivia competition, “The Floor.” As a fan of host Rob Lowe and having watched the show with his mom in the past, Howell decided to apply.
Broadcasted on Fox, “The Floor” is a show that invites 100 contestants to compete in a game of trivia, Howell explained. Each contestant is given a trivia category and stands on one square of the titular floor.
The object of the game is to amass the most land on the floor by winning duels against neighboring competitors to take over their square. At the end of each weekly episode, the person with the most territory wins $20,000. The season-winner takes home $250,000.
The day after applying, Howell was invited back for an audition and interview. Once he was accepted, Howell spent two weeks in Dublin, Ireland to film the show.
Howell’s acceptance as a contestant came at no surprise to his friend Camille Wise GS. “Lawrenzo is the friend everybody wants to have,” she said. “If he stands in a room, everyone’s going to be looking at Lawrenzo, not because he wants to (but) he’s just a light in the world.”
The categories in Howell’s game ranged from pie flavors to “Sexiest Man Alive” covers. Howell’s category was about the Roman Empire.
“That was really fun because people were scared of that,” Howell said. “They were like ‘I don’t remember anything from my sixth grade world history class about the Roman Empire.’”
Howell previously worked as a high school teacher, which Wise believes gave him an advantage. “I was like ‘of course you have the skill set to be ready for that,’” she recalled, thinking about when she found out he was going to be on a trivia show.
Howell enjoyed his experience on the show, and said that “it was a nice distraction from the stress that we experience here at Brown.”
Brown is “a rigorous space, and so I think that it was a moment to humanize myself and remember that I am not just a student, (but) I am a person,” he added.
Howell also said that he fondly remembers the friendships he made while there, and shared that he went to a fellow contestant-turned-friend’s wedding in New Orleans.
Morgan Thomas GS, who is also a friend of Howell, recalled watching one of the episodes with Howell. “I was so happy. I recorded basically the whole first episode,” she said, noting that she was “screaming every time he popped up.”
When watching the show, Wise said she could not tell that Howell was nervous, despite him telling her after the fact that he was. “On that show, I saw my friend, I saw the day-to-day Lawrenzo,” she added. “I didn’t see any fakeness. I didn’t see anyone who was worried.”
Thomas hopes that “The Floor” will bring Howell back on the show in the future.
“I would say the thing that I took most from that experience is to not be afraid, to put yourself out there,” Howell said. “That was my biggest takeaway … that I am good enough and I am a star, and I am meant to be on TV and that doesn’t take away from me being an Ivy League student.”
The fifth season premiered on April 8, and the date for the season-finale has not yet been announced.
