Head-spinning experience: Cape Cod Wheel of Fortune contestant realizes lifelong dream

Natasha Cash works a later shift at the dental office on Mondays, so she was just walking in the door when Wheel of Fortune came on at 7 p.m.

After a year-long application process and a whirlwind December trip to Sony Studios in Los Angeles, Cash was on the small screen, a contestant on one of national television’s most beloved game shows, standing under the hot television lights, feet from Pat Sajak and Vanna White.

For Cash, who serves as the vice chair of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's enrollment committee, being on Wheel of Fortune was a lifelong dream.

As a kid, the Yarmouth Port resident would tell friends she’d been a contestant, though it wasn’t true. She loved solving the show’s word puzzles, in which contestants guess letter by letter, winning and losing money and prizes along the way based on spins of the massive carnival wheel for which the show is named.

And she was good at it.

“I’d kill it on the couch every single night, literally dusting everyone in my family,” said Cash. “It was my dream my whole life to be on the show.”

Cash decided to apply to be a Wheel of Fortune contestant after seeing a TV commercial after work last February.

'Oh, there's a WheelOfFortune.com?'

“It said, ‘If you want to be a contestant, just go to WheelOfFortune.com,’” Cash remembered. “I’m like, ‘Oh, there’s a WheelOfFortune.com?’”

She filled out a form and fired off an application video she recorded while still in her scrubs.

In July, Cash got an email saying she’d been chosen to audition for the show. After completing more paperwork and participating in two mock Wheel of Fortune shows via Zoom, she waited for the producers to decide if she’d make the cut.

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Cash said friends and family would describe her as quiet and somewhat reserved. Auditioning for the show took Cash outside of her comfort zone. But she adapted quickly.

“It's so much easier to do that in front of complete strangers than it is the people in your hometown,” she said.

On the set of Wheel of Fortune

In early December, Cash learned she’d been chosen as a contestant, and the experience of a lifetime began.

She and her husband flew to Los Angeles on Dec. 14. They got to the hotel around 2 a.m., giving Cash only hours before she was scheduled to be on the Wheel of Fortune set at 6 the next morning.

“Sony Studios itself was insane, like insane,” Cash gushed. “I would have gone to L.A. just for that. Oprah films there, they film movies there, everything you can name.”

The contestants, 18 of 22 of whom would make it on TV, spent the morning preparing for their big moment. Show producers went over past contestants' mistakes and gave TV tips, advising contestants to speak loudly and use as few words as possible to keep the show moving. The advice was hard to remember under the bright lights at showtime, Cash said.

“You just zone out when you’re up there,” Cash laughed. “I forgot everything.”

Cash said contestants didn’t recognize Vanna White, who strolled into the studio to greet everyone before the show, until they heard her voice.

“She is so sweet,” Cash said. “She was dressed down, just came from jogging, hair in a bun. She just commanded the audience immediately just upon speaking into the mic. It was so amazing.”

Perhaps the most overwhelming moment, though, was seeing the Wheel of Fortune set for the first time in real life. The colors of the set Cash knows so well were somehow brighter, more vibrant, she said.

“When you really walk in that room and see the wheel and see the actual board, it's like, oh my God, I don't even have a word for the experience,” Cash said. “Everyone keeps asking me that and I cannot even come up with the words to describe what it was like. And every single one of us felt the same thing. All 22 of us were like, ‘Oh my God, we are really here right now, for real, on the Wheel of Fortune. There's the wheel right there. There's a little bonus wheel right over there. There's the brand new car right over there.’ It was crazy.”

Contestants sorted into groups

After contestants were sorted into groups of three ahead of the show, Cash learned she would be among the first contestants on stage that day. Cash would be competing against one contestant she’d befriended and one whose lightning-fast guesses drew attention at practice all morning.

When the cameras started rolling, Cash made the Cape proud, racking up nearly $6,000, on top of the expenses provided by the show.

“The money means nothing to me,” Cash said. “Of course, I would have loved to make it to the bonus round — I knew exactly what letters and category I was going to pick, and I knew the answer to the bonus round within a second. But it’s just the experience. Money comes and goes, but to have that experience … I’ve been telling every single person since I got back.”

Cash has also has been telling friends and family to apply to the show themselves.

“You have to do it,” Cash said. “You'd be crazy not to feel those emotions and have that experience and just everything that comes with that. You'd be crazy not to do it. It was amazing. I can compare it to nothing better in my life.”

Jeannette Hinkle is a reporter for The Cape Cod Times. Reach her at jhinkle@capecodonline.com.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: A year of waiting: Natasha Cash goes for the cash on Wheel of Fortune