“The Amazing Race,” one of the reality shows know for bringing about diverse casts, is taking it a few steps further as it enters its 10th season in the fall. For the first time, the show features an Indian-American couple and brothers who are practicing Muslims — and Browns fans — from Cleveland, Ohio.
All around, it looks like a fine mix of teams, although the oldest cast member is Duke Marcoccio, a 52-year-old tour company owner from Warwick, R.I. He’s in the race with his daughter, 26, who is gay and was estranged from her family for several years after she came out to them. There’s no senior couple this time.
There are a pair of reigning Miss USA pagaent contestants, though. Dustin Konzelman (Miss California) and Kandice Pelletier (Miss New York) are both 24 and met while rooming together at the contest.
The contestant mix will work itself out as the race gets going. It starts in Seattle, which is located about 25 miles south of Everett.
More fascinating, though, was to hear host Phil Koeghan talk about trying to keep up with the teams as the race goes.
“I’m always amused when people ask me if I go sightseeing or shopping along the way on ‘The Amazing Race,’” Koeghan said. “I guess it’s because the show is episodic and it they think that when you have these long pieces of time between shooting pieces. But we shoot the entire season in about 28 days and we traveled about 40,000 miles in this season, we have traveled up to 75,000. So every 2 (plus) days, we’re completing a show. And the idea is to try and stay ahead of the teams and go everywhere they go in terms of where the detrours are and the roadblocks. So, there’s a lot of … trying to calculate whether we can actually get to a particular location to shoot the stand-ups before the teams get there or while they’re there and still stay ahead of them and be standing at the mat.
“There have been occasions where I have literally run up to the mat and they come running the other way. It happens.”
Keoghan was asked whether he’s “five-starring” it at fancy hotels along the way.
“Sometimes we don’t get to hotels. It’s pretty common for me to wash my hair on the side of the road. We call ahead to the next country and make sure there’s a bottle of water and a little thing of shampoo and a towel, so…”
Creator and executive producer Bertram Van Munster jumped in and said, “I’ve got to tell you he’s being very humble, but I know he once sat at an airport for 10 hours because he couldn’t get into the country, I know that for a fact, and he slept on a bench somewhere while we were four-starring it.”
“So,” San Jose Mercury News columnist Charlie McCollum asked, “Jeff Probst is a wimp?”
Keoghan smiled and shook his head, “No, I wouldn’t say that, but I will say that I carry my own bag. There’s no makeup person out there. There’s no wardrobe person. And if I look like crap it’s because I’m asked to put a little powder on, but that’s it.”
A little sweat problem was resolved with sanitary pads under the armpits.
“It stops the, uhh, flow, so to speak,” Keoghan said.
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