GENIUS JUNIOR
Jupiter 10-year-old competes on TV show
When other kids were enjoying their vacation last summer, Jupiter’s Treasure Stein, then 9, was inside, poring over massive amounts of information like New York subway maps and math problems. When her siblings were playing, she was studying.
And on Sunday, the rest of the world gets to see the pay-off.
“It was worth it,” says Treasure, now 10, who will be seen as a contestant on “Genius Junior” (9 p.m. Sunday on NBC), which has teams of kids competing against each other in an intense test of smarts. “It was a stressful and exciting experience, at the same time.”
Treasure, now 10 years old and a student at The Benjamin School, competed on a team called “The Fast & The Curious” with two other young teammates — “I’m the one who came up with the name,” she says. “I wanted to call us The Smartinis, but we went with the other one.”
The show, hosted by actor Neil Patrick Harris of “How I Met Your Mother,” “Doogie Howser, M.D.” and “A Series of Unfortunate Events” fame, premiered this month but has been more than a year in the works. Treasure’s audition process took a long 14 months, dating back to a Facebook announcement that her mother Wendy noticed.
“It had all of these questions that I kept saying ‘Yes’ to,” Wendy recalls. “It said ‘Does your child have a genius level IQ?’ Yes. ‘Does she have a photographic memory?’ Yes. It seemed like something she would be interested in. I’m always telling her how bright she is, and she said ‘Let’s try it.’ That got the whole ball rolling, but we had no idea what it was going to entail.”
That rolling ball started with a phone call to casting, followed by what Wendy says was “a pretty challenging test” and several auditions both on Skype and in person.
“But I always like a challenge,” confirms Treasure, a fixture on the honor roll at Benjamin. She’s also on the Student Council and came in second in the school spelling bee when “I accidentally spelled the word ‘facilitate’ wrong. As soon as I said it, I was like ‘Nooo!’”
No matter — Treasure is obviously able to at least facilitate and navigate a TV game show. She met her teammates, who hailed from California and New York, about a week before the taping of their episode in Los Angeles. She says that her mother was excited to meet host Harris, who played a child genius himself in “Doogie Howser M.D.”
“My mom loved Doogie as a kid, and I was like ‘Who?’” Treasure admits.
Wendy Stein, whose family also includes furniture business husband Andy, son Andrew, 9, and twins Paradise and Haven, 8, says she knew that Treasure had likely nailed her final casting interview when she entered the room with a back handspring.
“I heard someone say ‘Treasure, you are a breath of fresh air,’” her mother says. “She’s a very driven kid.”
Although Treasure can’t reveal whether or not The Fast & The Curious won the episode, she says she’s glad she did it, and that meeting new friends was more important than winning or losing.
“The experience of the whole show was awesome,” she says. “Hard work does pay off.”