We Talked Rob Lowe Trivia ... With Rob Lowe. Here’s What Happened

“I love trivia and I’m really competitive,” Rob Lowe tells me 15 minutes into our interview for his AARP The Magazine cover story. I hold back a smile — he has no idea we’re about to put him to the test.

I interviewed Lowe in 2018 and can vouch for his competitive streak. We talked then about him upping the ante from surfing to kitesurfing to foiling, where a hydrofoil lifts the board above the water’s surface for a faster and riskier ride. “If you fall, it’s an underwater big knife,” he mused back then. “So you gotta be careful!”

Given his clear love for any and all challenges, I knew a game would be perfect for our on-camera segment — but not just any game. As the host of Fox’s trivia game The Floor, Lowe is used to delivering rapid-fire trivia questions to contestants on everything from weddings to Marvel, sports to fairy tales, and everything in between. All well and good — but, we wondered, just how well does Rob Lowe know Rob Lowe?

After finishing our feature interview, I tell him, “We’re going to go into the other room for a short on-camera thing I think you’ll like.” He flashes me a grin that says he’s down for anything and settles into a director’s chair. As the crew finishes a mic check, he sits for a final hair touch-up while we deliver our challenge.

“OK, Rob, since you host The Floor, we thought it’d be fun to ask you a bunch of trivia about Rob Lowe,” I say. His face lights up: challenge accepted. “Bring it on!” he declares.

He gets the first one right.

Question: “I asked ChatGPT, ‘What is Rob Lowe’s best role?’ It tried to give me a top 10 list, but I told it to pick one. Which role did it select?”

Lowe praises ChatGPT for initially selecting 10 of his best roles and not just narrowing it down to one. “See, AI is not all bad. Turns out they’re clearly a fan!” he says with a laugh, before correctly guessing the answer: The West Wing. I move on to the next question, which he interrupts by saying, “Oh, I only get to find out at the end how I did?” as a shameless plea to get me to cave. I don’t, and we continue, through 20 questions.

Curious to see how Lowe fared? Watch the video to learn which questions stumped him, including one I made up in his son’s voice, and questions that made him grimace and mutter “I’m screwed for sure.”

Spoiler alert: He had a passing grade, scoring 13 out of 20. Upon being told he got seven of the 20 wrong, Lowe lets out a high-pitched “What? No! No!” He was convinced he’d only missed two or three. We go through the answers to the questions he answered incorrectly, and I assure him he did just fine.

And in truth, his enthusiasm remained unblunted. “OK. That was fun! That was super fun. Those were good questions,” he says as we wrap things up. I hand him my printed questions on which I tallied his score before he heads out to his next commitment. “This is amazing. I’m going to keep this!” Lowe calls out from halfway down the hall, eyes glued to the paper, reviewing those that he got wrong to ensure no repeats down the line.