This was the question plaguing the minds of The Amazing Race brass back in early 2020. The Emmy-winning show had begun production of its 33rd season in February, and it seemed to be business as usual. Teams had a virtual starting line when host Phil Keoghan told them to leave their homes and fly to their first location in London, going from there to Scotland. But nobody realized how virtual the world would be forced to become after that, as COVID-19 began its onslaught around the globe. “We heard rumblings about COVID,” recalls Keoghan exclusively to Parade.com. “It was being talked about. But I don’t think any of us saw it any different than when we were talking about the swine flu back in the day. Definitely deadly, but it felt like one of those things that you could avoid. It didn’t feel like it was something that was going to be a global pandemic.” “Initially, there was no alarm,” adds Amazing Race co-creator Bertram van Munster. “Otherwise, we would have never left in the first place.” By the end of the third leg, he had already scouted ahead to northern Sweden in the Arctic Circle, the intended destination for Leg 4. And he was making plans for additional places like Kathmandu and Thailand, locations that were part of a route that ultimately never saw the light of day. Van Munster had begun to hear rumblings of rising COVID cases in Asia, which made him start to pivot the rest of the season. “I put an alternate route together to South America,” he says. “We have connections all over the world, so we could put this relatively quickly together. But then I started talking to more people around the world. And they said, ‘This is very dangerous. Something is really wrong here.’ So I called the network, and I said, ‘We should not do the show.’” CBS agreed, and on February 28, only a week into filming, filming was suspended mid-season for the first time in the show’s history. Sending a cast and crew of over 3000 home is easier said than done. But the producers take pride in succeeding in their goal, getting everyone back to Los Angeles within 72 hours. But for Keoghan, saying it was difficult to give the unprecedented news that the race would be stopping to the remaining teams would be an understatement. “It was very emotional,” he says. “These teams have all sacrificed so much to be there. They left jobs, left their families, completely turned their lives upside down to be a part of something special. And then they are suddenly told, ‘Listen, sorry, we’re flying you home.’ You can imagine some people were like, ‘Is this really necessary? Are you sure? This is unprecedented. We’ve never had anything like this. Are we going to come back next month? How long could this go on for?’” That was the question on everyone’s minds once they got settled in back home. Days became weeks became months, leaving many to wonder if there would even be a race to go back to. As time ticked by, other CBS reality shows like Big Brother, Survivor, and Keoghan’s very own Tough as Nails were able to find solutions to filming during the pandemic. While it was great to get back to a form of normalcy, it got Amazing Race fans yearning for a taste of their show to come back too. Why couldn’t they film an entirely domestic season, like season 8’s “Family Edition”? “It wasn’t safe in the United States either!” Keoghan answers with a laugh. “Just to move from one state to another was dangerous.” Indeed, the shows above were able to film because they could put themselves in one location and create a “bubble” to last throughout filming. It’s infinitely tougher to create one big mobile bubble to move around the world. But despite that distinction, the producers were looking to bring the race back, especially as the science community broke through in early 2021. “What we really did was waited for that vaccine to come out,” explains Amazing Race co-creator Elise Doganieri. “If we didn’t have the vaccine, I think it would be a bit of a different story.” Van Munster and Doganieri had recently come off of filming The Quest, a new reality series on Disney+, with numerous COVID protocols in place and no outbreaks. With that blueprint, they worked with fellow producer Mark Vertullo and a COVID-19 task force from CBS/Viacom to see what would need to be done for the race to begin again. And so, over a year after having to halt The Amazing Race machine, the work began to start it back up. First up was the route. Obviously, traveling to most of the world was out of the question, as vaccine distribution meant different countries were in different states of the pandemic. Instead, the producers opted to focus on a Europe-only season. Picking back up in Zurich, Switzerland, the teams would travel to cities in France (Corsica), Greece (Chalkidiki and Thessaloniki), and Portugal (Lisbon) before heading back to L.A. once more. Not only did they seek Europe as their hub due to their low case numbers, but also their smaller towns and more wide-open spaces, which have fewer chances of contact than Paris or Berlin. And that may serve as a blast from the past for longtime fans. “It’s very reminiscent of the early days of Amazing Race,” Doganieri says. “In the early 2000s, tourism was not as big. The world is a little bit of a smaller place in our early seasons. You did not see tourists all the time everywhere. I think you’re going to see a picture of what it might have looked like in the early days when tourism was a little bit on a smaller scale, which is beautiful. There’s more countryside, more landscapes, and more beautiful buildings to see without the crowds.” But for the people we will see on the screen, know that they had gone through a lengthy process to get there. Public transportation was barred for the restart of the race out of safety, as the racers will be relying solely on self-driving (a source of great drama on the show through the years). But interacting with locals is a natural part of The Amazing Race, and the producers didn’t want to remove that entirely. Every person the racers interacted with, from pit stop greeters to judges at Roadblocks, Detours, and other tasks, went through rigorous COVID tests. Every cast and crew member had to be vaccinated to return and were tested on a near-daily basis. And for what it’s worth, the communities they visited seemed more than happy to make adjustments. After all, even though the world may look different, the show still thrives after two decades of highlighting diverse places worldwide while not even needing to leave your couch. Speaking of the tasks, it does raise a question about camaraderie and strategy in the race. The previous season, which aired in the fall of 2020 after being in the can for nearly two years, received criticism from fans when an alliance established in the second leg dominated the season, strategically sharing answers to help one another. Before the pandemic, van Munster and Doganieri had said in interviews that they were looking at ways to curb that behavior moving forward. But did that priority take a backseat in all of the new planning that had to be done? “I actually think a lot of these contestants saw season 32,” Doganieri says. “And they also did not care for what went down there. This group was a really fantastic group of racers—all type A personalities, super energetic, enthusiastic. But I think they also saw the things that turned other teams against each other. And so they probably learned from the mistakes that were made by other teams.” “As it became more competitive, it became more secretive,” adds van Munster. Regardless of how much strategy is used, there will be one place every leg the teams will go and build bonds, what the producers say was the biggest game-changer to coming back: A chartered plane. Though seasons of the past were predicated on teams booking travel on various flights, this was a way to guarantee everyone’s safety. The Boeing 757, decked out with Amazing Race branding to boot, serves as a “mobile bubble” but was actually in the picture for the show before the pandemic happened. “It was actually something that we had thought about before COVID,” Doganieri says. “We were thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to charter a plane and fly our crew around, knowing that they’re arriving and departing, on a schedule that we could make happen?’ But there’s always so much fun with the commercial flight, running through the airport, getting your flight. That part of the race has always been very exciting. But this time, we were forced into the situation, to put on the thinking cap and say, ‘How can we make this just as exciting as the original format with the commercial flights?’” And indeed, they found a way. Teams will leave the plane in the same order they checked into the previous leg’s pit stop, continuing the staggered starts of earlier seasons. That means those who did well the day before will still get an advantage over the competition, without feeling the slate is completely wiped clean each and every episode. “Viewers don’t like it when everybody gets stopped by an Hours of Operation,” says Doganieri. “But this allowed us to make sure the teams that came in first, second, third, fourth, still have an advantage, but also have a super tight race. You always have another team breathing down your neck. So the energy throughout the whole season is really high. You have a true race in every episode.” Speaking of the season proper, the two-hour premiere on Wednesday, January 5 will show two of the first three legs filmed prior to production shutting down during the pandemic. Van Munster calls the opening episodes “outright bizarre,” a true time capsule back to pre-pandemic days and shots of teams taking taxis in crowded metropolitan streets. But by Leg 4, things will look quite different. Not only will all of the protocols previously stated be put in place, but the cast will look a little thinner. As has been reported, of the nine teams that were still in the hunt for the million-dollar prize when production went on hiatus, only seven were able to return. “It was a little bit of a hit,” Doganieri admits. “But we figured after so many months that had passed, not everybody could do it. Things change in our lives, jobs, relationships. Everybody really wanted to come back, but for some people just wasn’t possible as much as they wanted to and tried.” To help make up for the deficit, the producers avoided simply stuffing in more non-elimination legs. “You want that big moment in the end to see which team gets eliminated,” says Doganieri. “So I will say that we did come up with a creative way to avoid those situations. It won’t feel any different from the races before. It’s a very smooth transition.” When the seven teams to return from the hiatus convened in Switzerland to restart the race this past fall, the mood felt notably different for Keoghan. “I was emotional,” he says, “because it was more of a collective. It felt bigger in terms of what it was we were all doing. It wasn’t just about the cast. It was also the people who were standing over there behind the cameras. It was like we were part of something bigger than just the cast. It was the whole Amazing Race family.” “So many have been through really tough times,” he continues. “People have lost work, lost jobs, lost family members. Everybody was affected. So it was thrilling for us to be back collectively and be like, ‘Okay, everybody. We’ve all been through this horrendous time. Let’s go have some fun. Let’s try to focus on something other than the doom and gloom of COVID.’ So much has been taken away. So much has changed. But some things have remained the same. In season one, I said, ‘The world is waiting for you. I told you the world was not waiting for you after this global pandemic. I’m pleased to tell you the world is waiting for you again.’” And for that matter, so are the fans, ready to take yet another remarkable, if unprecedented, trip around the world. The Amazing Race 33 premieres with a special two-hour episode on Wednesday, January 5 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. Next, here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming season of Survivor 42.
