Ike Barinholtz and his dad, Alan Barinholtz, have been preparing for this moment for years!
The father-son duo competed on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in an episode that aired on Aug. 14 and triumphed as the only pair to win the $1 million jackpot so far this season. After answering questions on slang terms for pests and Scrabble-level word definitions, Ike and Alan won the $1 million prize for a charity of their choice and told some jokes along the way.
Calling their family “trivia forward,” Ike tells PEOPLE that his entire childhood was in preparation for this competition.
“Our whole life has been a trivia night. Whether it was when we were little and we would play Trivial Pursuit, or, I think, we watched almost every episode of Jeopardy! and watched hundreds of episodes of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” he recalls.
The Mindy Project star, 47, and his Jury Duty actor father watched their episode of the competition show air at the Los Encinos School, where their nephew and grandson, Dezi, attends.
DISNEY/Christopher Willard
Dezi — who is Jon Barinholtz‘s son with his wife Annika — is deaf, and Ike and Alan won the million dollars to fund an American Sign Language (ASL) program at the school. Ike says the initiative will be a “beacon” for students in the area who are hard of hearing or deaf, and serve as a framework for how other schools can build similar programs.
“Jonny had told us what this school was hoping to do if they had funding for it and basically what the money will allow them to do is to make their school ASL-ready,” Ike explains. “There’s not a lot of great options for deaf children when it comes to schooling and so this money will allow Los Encinos to teach dozens of their instructors and other students ASL.”
While Ike has been in the industry for over a decade — acting in films like Sisters, Blockers and Neighbors, and building a creative partnership with Mindy Kaling on fan-favorite sitcom The Mindy Project and the upcoming Netflix show Running Point — Alan is having a second career moment as a self-described “nepo dad.”
With the support of his sons and wife Peggy — who simply said, “Please don’t embarrass the family,” before going on television — the lawyer portrayed Judge Alan Rosen on the viral Freevee show Jury Duty.
“Both my sons are now my consiglieres. They are my advisors,” Alan says of his burgeoning acting career, which also includes a role in Apple TV+’s Physical and an upcoming gig on the NBC comedy St. Denis Medical.
The father-son duo are excited for their former and current costars to watch their big win. Beyond sharing the news with the Los Encinos School staff and their family members, Ike says he can’t wait to tell Kaling, who knew he was competing on the show — but doesn’t know how he and Alan fared.
“I told her what I was doing that day, and then she asked me how it went and I was like, ‘Yeah, it was fine,'” the actor says. “So maybe she logged in her mind that I kind of blew past the question. I’m excited for her to see it.”
Evans Vestal Ward/Universal Television/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
Ike is also looking forward to sharing the big news with some of his trivia-inclined friends, either to celebrate together or, in one case, to brag.
“I’m excited for B.J. Novak to see it because he’s a trivia head. Also, Brendan Hunt, Patton Oswalt [whom Ike competed against on Celebrity Jeopardy!], David Chang and all the trivia nerds. I’d also like to rub in the face of the other people who were on Millionaire and did not win the millions,” he jokes.
Alan interjects with a laugh: “Uh, yeah. That would be [Nick] Kroll.”
Ike one-ups his dad, jokingly yelling, “Suck it, Kroll!” before quickly adding, “Actually, I had dinner with him last week. He’s just the most wonderful man.”
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Who Wants To Be A Millionaire airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
