Sebastian Lennox, the 12-year-old smarty pants from Great Neck, will be on this Sunday’s episode of “Genius Junior,” which is a one-hour competition series featuring the brightest children in America. Hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, the exciting new game show will test the intelligence of children ages 8 to 12 with increasingly difficult quiz questions, with the goal of being crowned ‘Genius Junior,’ according to a press release.
In order to take home the grand prize of a ‘Genius Junior’ grant, which will kick off the bright futures that lay ahead of these kids, the team has to be brilliant at everything! Spelling, memorization, mathematics, you name it.
When Sebastian was auditioning for the show, it was no ordinary casting call. The audition was mostly academic, including IQ testing, mental math quizzing, and memorization exercises. Sebastian then joined the twelve teams of incredibly intelligent children from all over the country to take on challenges such as memorizing the entire U.S. highway system, spelling complex words backwards, and doing highly difficult math equations in their heads.
On this week’s episode, Sebastian will join his team “The Fast and the Curious” in challenges including memorizing Greyhound bus routes across the U.S., the ‘Number Cruncher,’ and the ‘Talking Dictionary.’
“My favorite part of filming…was everything!” says Sebastian. “The crowd and the cameras were awesome, but I especially loved my teammates and everyone’s sportsmanship. It was an excellent experience.”
When Sebastian isn’t answering quiz questions on national television, he loves playing music. Sebastian started off his musical career learning the violin and has recently picked up the viola, an instrument he really enjoys playing. Sebastian also has a passion for architecture and building, which stemmed from his love of LEGOs as a little boy.
Another interest of Sebastian’s includes the Spanish language, which he taught himself.
“I started learning by using a website,” says Sebastian. “Then came a lot of memorization, visualizing the language, and especially watching soccer in Spanish so I could become more fluent and understand where the accents were.”
You can watch Sebastian and his team “The Fast and the Curious” take on the “Craniums and Braniums” this Sunday at 9/8c on NBC.
