‘The Amazing Race’ Q&A: Phil Keoghan Explains Season 34’s Biggest Changes

The host of the CBS reality competition tells TheWrap about the excitement ahead as the show kicks off outside of the U.S. for the first time ever

Phil Keoghan in "The Amazing Race" (CBS)
Phil Keoghan in "The Amazing Race" (CBS)

On Wednesday night, “The Amazing Race” takes flight, beginning its first season outside of the U.S. — in Munich, Germany. And starting outside the states is the first of several twists ahead in Season 34.

As the show continues on CBS, the racing teams will also, this year, be contending with more eliminations than the show has ever seen. There are no non-elimination rounds, it’s been announced. 

Ahead of Wednesday night’s premiere, TheWrap spoke with host Phil Keoghan, who shared insight into what we can expect in the weeks ahead, including from former NFL coach Rex Ryan.

TheWrap: Before we get into the details of this season, can we talk about having Rex Ryan on ‘The Amazing Race’ this season? 

Phil Keoghan: He’s one of those characters that’s just larger than life, and somebody who, when you see him on TV, he’s all of that and then a whole bunch more. … He’s such a presence that you kind of – you feel it when he walks around.

Do you know the backstory behind how he got paired up with the probation officer, Tim?

They started with being golfing buddies. is my understanding. And they just really liked each other. I think they just liked each other’s competitiveness, and they loved hanging out with each other. … [There are] some people you meet where you realize that you’ve got a good connection with somebody, and he was definitely one of those people.

I think they’re probably the team I’m most interested to see this upcoming season just because I wonder what he brings as a coach, and a probation officer brings with that kind of a background. That’s going to make for some interesting racing.

Tim is highly competitive. He’s been a powerlifter. This is somebody who’s a force in his own right. It’s not like Rex just brought along some person who is going to sit in the background and agree to everything and just be a pushover. He’s a legit, competitive person and in his own right. So, the two of them are definitely a force. At the beginning, they come right in with making it very clear that they mean business. They’re not there to muck around.

What can you tell me about the challenges this season? I love some of the ones that are like, so ridiculous, like the cheese going down the hill. … You guys come up with ridiculously fun stuff!

I was literally just talking about this with the team. We love the idea that we can give some context to the whole adage of ‘the what, the where, the why, the when, and the how.’ So why are we in this remote land? What’s special, unique, different about this remote place that we’re in, that context, I think, is hugely important. And one of the things I love is when people will take photographs of themselves in the places that we have traveled to on ‘Race.’ It’s incredibly satisfying to know that we have influenced somebody to go to a particular part of the world to experience that part of the world. So, I love that, and yeah, and the challenge is, you know, things that are unique to that place, like the big rolls of cheese in Switzerland – I don’t think that that’s something that the locals would suggest you do if you come to visit .. it was a wonderful accident waiting to happen, and definitely something that has become iconic on the show. 

So you’re starting in Munich, Germany this year? What made you guys decide to start the show out of the U.S. this time around? 

What made us decide to? … Just, why not? With a format that works – and I was reading some crazy statistics about how hard it is to get a format to work, like how many shows have launched over the years, and how many have failed, and it’s staggering. It’s staggering how few shows go beyond Season 1. And so I think with ‘Amazing Race,’ there’s this incredible format that Bertram and Elise came up with all these years ago that has stood the test of time because it’s a perfect format. It just really works: pairs, people interacting, roadblocks, detours, the whole thing, it works. But at the same time, you’re also wanting to try different things as well within the format. And so, yeah, we’ve never started outside the United States before. So why don’t we start outside the United States? That’s sort of where it came from. It’s not anything more than that.

Having no non-elimination legs, did that make the competition that much more fierce knowing that, you know, you have to give it your all on every leg of this race?

Yes. I think over the years. The idea of the eliminations and non-eliminations has divided a lot of fans, some people like the anticipation of not knowing. And then there are others that are more cutthroat and adamant: ‘No. If you arrive last, there’s no second chances. You’re out, you’re done.’ And so, I think, again, just to make things a little more competitive and just to change things up, we decided that we would make things a little bit harder… But I think it just – it put everybody on edge. I mean, it certainly got a huge reaction at the start, when I told them, ‘Oh, by the way, if you arrived last, you will be last, there are no second chances.’ So we dropped a few bombs on them at the start. And that was definitely one of them.

“The Amazing Race” Season 34 premieres Wednesday night at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.

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