Phil Keoghan Playfully Lists His Pet Peeves While Excitedly Setting Up Season 36 of THE AMAZING RACE

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Host Phil Keoghan is always looking to make little tweaks on THE AMAZING RACE, while also keeping the heart of what has been a two-and-a-half decade success story intact. So, with Season 36 debuting on Wednesday, March 13, at 9:30 p.m. ET on CTV, CTV.ca, and the CTV app, devoted fans will notice as the race progresses that there are no non-elimination legs in this edition. The team that finishes last in each leg will be eliminated, no exceptions. “Having no non-eliminations isn’t necessarily a permanent thing – I think we just decided we would mix it up a wee bit,” Keoghan explained in an interview with The Lede. “We’ve done things like that in the past couple of seasons, just to change it up, and make it different. Maybe it will make it even more competitive running onto the mat, because you know you’ve got no second chance. But at the end of the day, at its core, this show has worked over the years, and continues to work, because it is literally following clues around the world, doing amazing things with amazing people.” It was pointed out to Keoghan that if there’s one thing about THE AMAZING RACE that conspiracy theorists love to speculate about, it’s the notion that non-elimination legs sometimes emerge at the whim of the producers, because they want a certain team to stay in the hunt. Keoghan had plenty to say on that front. “Listen, I understand, I get it, people love their conspiracy theories,” Keoghan said. “But people don’t understand that it affects flights, hotel rooms, and a lot of times the places we go to get booked up months in advance. But the other thing is, we’re traveling with legal representation. We’re running a sanctioned competition. It’d be a little bit like changing the rules of a lottery, after the rules have been laid out, and after people have bought their tickets. You can’t just randomly mess with a sanctioned competition where the stakes are a million dollars.” On top of that, running a transparent competition is a point of personal emphasis for Keoghan. “There are some reality shows that have done some things that are pretty shonky (slang for dubious in New Zealand, where Keoghan is from), and given some people reason to maybe come up with conspiracy theories, but what I will tell you is we have prided ourselves, and do pride ourselves, in producing a fair show,” Keoghan said. “I’ve said it on all the shows I work on, and I would say the same thing to the contestants. At the end of the day, when we crown the winner on this show, all of you need to acknowledge and accept and agree that whoever has won deserved to win, and has done it fairly, and you are good with them winning. That is hugely important.” Continuing along that path, Keoghan was asked, what are the things that the viewing public consistently gets wrong about THE AMAZING RACE? What are the misunderstandings that drive him a bit mad, because no matter how often he explains, some fans just don’t quite get it? Keoghan came up with three items right away:

1. “Well, you already touched on one, which is the notion that we just randomly make up when we put a non-elimination in, or an elimination.”
2. “The second one is, people are always asking me, ‘well, what do you do when the teams are racing?’ I don’t know how many times I’ve had to explain this, but the audience knows far more when they’re watching the show than I know at the time. I haven’t seen what the audience has seen with all the teams racing to the mat, because the audience is seeing the final cut. I’m relying on WhatsApp and communication from the field to try and stay on top of the storylines, so that I can interview the teams when they arrive. The audience expects me to know what’s going on, but I don’t always necessarily get every single nuance of information. Plus, the audience doesn’t realize that I go everywhere the teams go! I’m the one who introduces all the challenges. So when you’re shooting 12 episodes in 21 days, what the heck do they think I’m doing? I’m literally racing from one place to the other, to stay ahead of the teams and beat them to the mat.”
3. “The other one that really drives me nuts is, so many people will start an interview with me by saying, ‘so, what’s new and different about this season?’ It’s like, oh my God, what do you want me to say? ‘Well, we’ve completely changed the format.’ Is it not enough that we have a brand new cast, that are going to amazing new places, and doing amazing new things? Is that not enough? Sometimes I’ll joke around with it. I got asked that question once and I said, ‘well, we’re going to do a three-legged race. The teams are going to tie their legs together, and the whole race will be a three-legged race.’ And this person went, ‘really?’ And I went, ‘no, not really!’ The majority of reality shows continue to go back to the same place. If it’s singing, they go back to the stage. They change the people, but they’re still singing. If it’s dancing, they go back to the studio. They change the people, but they’re still dancing. We change up the people as well, but we also change up what they’re doing, and we change up the destinations. It’s our biggest selling point.”

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