Lauryn Johnson, a 13 year old girl from Turlock, will be appearing on the Nickelodeon game show, Brain Surge. The show will air on April 25th, once at 4pm and then again at 7pm.
Lauryn’s mother Rachel Johnson, who organizes the Turlock community event Henry’s March, saw that her daughter was good at the game when playing along from home and found out how her daughter could apply to be on the show.
After applying and being accepted to audition, Rachel and Lauryn took a mother/daughter road trip down to Hollywood where many other children went to audition over the course of weeks for their chance to compete on the television game show.
Brain Surge’s website describes the game show this way – “Warning: Watching this show may make your brain explode. Hold on to the couch while you watch kids compete in quick-moving, mind-bending challenges.”
Brain Surge is a memory game show so Lauryn’s audition was based on the ability to remember things, and quickly.
From the time of audition until the time the producers of the show called the Johnson’s back, 4-5 weeks had passed. Rachel Johnson was in Paris, France when the television producers called to say that Lauryn had been chosen to appear on the show, and was luckily up at the 2am time oversees.
Lauryn applied for the show in December, auditioned in March, and taped the show in April… of 2010.
“We filmed April of last year,” said Lauryn. “Yeah, it’s been that long.”
The people from the show told Rachel that they couldn’t tell anyone when it airs.
“We predicted that they would air the show in the fall, but never did,” said Rachel.
The Johnson’s were recording every show since then waiting for the episode that Lauryn appeared in but it never came on. At one point, the show wasn’t even being aired.
“They weren’t even showing reruns,” explained Lauryn. “I was like, what if it doesn’t show.”
Recently the Johnson’s were informed that the show would air between April 25th and April 29th, about a year after the original filming of the show.
Besides the Brain Surge t-shirt that only contestants get, commemorating Lauryn’s appearance, there’s been nothing else to show of her participation in Nickelodeon’s game show until now.
“It’s almost too small for me,” said Lauryn.
Lauryn had just turned 12 years and was in 7th grade at Denair Middle School when she auditioned and is now 13 years old and an 8th grader, looking forward to being a freshman at Turlock High School next year.
While it is going to be a little strange for Lauryn and her family to watch her playing on the game show when she was an entire year younger, they are all excited to see the television show come on.
During Lauryn’s taping, Jordin Sparks made a celebrity appearance as the guest co-host and will be on the episode Laurynn competed in, set to air on April 25th, once at 4pm and then again at 7pm.
While the Johnson’s have anxiously been awaiting the airing of the show for about a year now, the family will not be in town during the airing as they are on a vacation in Hawaii.
