Jane Lynch Is the New Host of ‘The Weakest Link,’ but What Happened to Anne Robinson?

In the early 2000s, there were a lot of entertainment tropes. When it came to reality TV, folks loved themselves a snarky British judge and anything having to do with eliminating contestants.

The Weakest Link combined these two tropes along with the righteous success of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The series enjoyed four seasons in the U.S. and way more across the pond, and now that it's being revived with actress Jane Lynch at the helm fans want to know: What happened to the show's first host?

If you remember when the show first debuted stateside in 2001, it was presented by Anne Robinson, rocking outfits that Neo from The Matrix would probably approve of. Her acerbic wit and no-nonsense attitude helped to embody the cutthroat nature of the show.

If you aren't familiar with the rules of the show, a team of folks is presented with a series of questions, and the more they answer correctly, the more money they earn.

The goal is to get to an ultimate cash prize, which in Season 1 was a whopping $1 million. (That amount was adjusted in subsequent seasons.) Whoever answers a question incorrectly breaks that "chain," and any un-banked money is lost. The questions are presented in timed rounds, so the more correct questions answered, the more money contestants can earn.

At the end of each round, members of the team get to discreetly vote for who they believe to be the weakest link on the team. Whoever's deemed to be the worst performer gets the boot from Anne Robinson with her curt catchphrase: "You are the weakest link. Goodbye!"

In the event of a tie, whoever was deemed the "strongest link" on the team gets to decide who between the two should get booted. The show ran from 2001 until 2002 on NBC for a total of four seasons but had a whopping 13 in the U.K. and a revival that is currently airing.

Viewers of the U.S. revival want to know what happened to Anne Robinson, who hosted the British series up until 2012 before calling it quits.

In an interview with BBC News around the time of her departure from the popular series, she said, "If there's anything about longevity in television, it's about knowing what to take and what to turn down, and what to stop. It's often about what not to do anymore."

While she's probably most closely associated with the series, Anne has had a litany of different hosting gigs and even voiced the character of Anne Droid in Doctor Who.

She's hosted Countdown since 1987, Watchdog from 1993–2015, a whopping 413 episodes of Points of View from 1986–1997, and several other programs.

New episodes of The Weakest Link air Sundays on NBC at 7 p.m. EST but after that, you can catch them on the Peacock TV app, the network's free streaming service. Will you be checking it out?