Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Amazing Race” Season 37.
After nine countries, 18 cities and over 29,000 miles, best friends and gamers Carson McCalley and Jack Dodge won “The Amazing Race” Season 37 on Thursday night.
A day later, they spoke to TheWrap about their once in a lifetime race around the world on CBS — including everything from competing in Dubai as a pair of openly gay men to the work they put in to ensure their communication skills were top notch before the show even began.
“The No. 1 most important thing to our race was before we left, we went to therapy together, which is not something that friends normally do,” McCalley revealed. “We’re already great communicators who have all the tools, yet we did so much groundwork and root stuff that we could bring with us into the race that was so helpful. Mainly about not expecting anything. On the race, so many people are like, ‘When I’m stressed, I need this from you.’ But you can’t expect anything. You can’t expect anyone, to act, talk or perform the way that you want them to, because that’s a recipe for disaster.”
“It’s about self-soothing, taking the responsibility upon yourself to be like no matter how they’re acting, it’s my choice and I’m in charge of my own destiny here,” Dodge elaborated. “If we have the same way of thinking, then we’re both showing up the best we can and we can trust that the other person is doing their best — there’s no expectation beyond both trying our best. And then beyond that, you just have so much love and trust for that person inherently.”
“It’s a process that reminds your brain to put your ego out of it and say we actually want the same thing, our goal is the same. So we were able to put our egos behind us,” McCalley said, while Dodge added: “On the race, uniquely compared to other reality shows where you’re going in alone, you actually get a given person where you know 100% they’re on your side. On ‘Survivor’ and ‘Big Brother’ and ‘The Traitors,’ even if you’re 99% sure you have a No. 1 ally in the game, it’s not the same as on the race where you are working together.”
With their $1 million win over fellow finalists Han and Holden Nguyen and Jonathan and Ana Towns, the pair of “gaymers” from Brooklyn are now the latest in a long line of queer winners of “The Amazing Race.” So what exactly makes the LGBTQ community so good at this specific reality competition series?
“When you’re young and especially when you are figuring out your queer awakening, at first, it’s really hard. You get used to this discomfort and feeling like you’re different. But then in order to come back from that, you have to seek beauty in the world, you have to seek fun,” Dodge explained. “The queer community, for me, exemplifies having fun with each other, putting yourself out there, being communicative, deep thinking, deep feeling — and performance as well. A lot of people think it’s so much about muscles, but a lot of ‘The Amazing Race’ is also about your performance, dancing and singing and things like that. So it all sort of prepares you for this race.”
“It is really physically exhausting — running, strength, whatever — but, really, ‘The Amazing Race’ is a mental game. It’s how you relate to the person that you’re running with, it’s how you relate to people on their teams, it’s how you get through stressful situations. I keep coming back to this Ocean Vuong quote that I really love: ‘Queerness saved my life. It made me pave alternate pathways. It made me ask, ‘Is this enough?’ I think it applies not just to queerness as attraction, but queerness as a way of viewing the world,” McCalley agreed. “In the race, queer people are really good at finding alternate pathways, about thinking about things in a different way or changing their thinking when it’s not benefiting them. That’s that’s why queer people succeed. They’re used to getting obstacles and using them as opportunities.”
And speaking of homosexuality, McCalley and Dodge actually won a leg set in Dubai this year — and production made sure to keep the contestants safe, considering it’s illegal to be gay in the United Arab Emirates.
“There are laws against homosexuality, so I wouldn’t go just myself, but going with a production you have safety in numbers. They warned us about customs and stuff, but ultimately, we sort of just trusted the race,” Dodge recalled. “It was special to be in a place where being gay is not so accepted and to have won that leg. We were having so much fun that leg, it was a magical experience.”
“For our Dubai leg, we were so in nature,” McCalley further noted. “I would have been more nervous over the way I speak, the way I act, the way I talk — but sleeping in the desert and then riding on camels and then skydiving and scuba diving alone, it just felt like we were with the elements in Dubai. It wasn’t like with the policy-makers really.”
He also shared a personal moment from their time in the Dubai desert that ultimately didn’t make the final cut.
“A huge factor for me even going on the race was that my mom passed three years ago. I was still sort of wrestling with finding the vibrancy of life, sort of feeling life a little less vibrantly. She used to watch the race and ‘Survivor’ back-to-back and I would watch with her. Like, my 13th birthday party was ‘Amazing Race’-themed,” McCalley told TheWrap. “In the desert of Dubai, I was crying about her. I understand why it was cut, but I think that was an element of the emotional life that was an undercurrent reason for even doing the race.”
“That was a big part of it, to hopefully help or push Carson, in a way, to find that vibrancy again,” Dodge then said in support. “Through putting yourself out there and also honoring your mom’s spirit, someone who was so out there and effervescent and always willing to take the plunge.”
Now that they have won the show’s biggest season ever, beating 13 other teams to meet host Phil Keoghan at the finish line in Miami, the best friends revealed the best part of their experience.
“By the end, when we knew we had made it to the final leg, just knowing that we would be completing the race in its entirety was actually the ultimate prize. The best part is not knowing what you’re going to get yourself into and knowing that fun is to be had, not having to plan anything,” Dodge shared. “You’re not knowing where you’re going and there’s nothing like it in the entire world that you can experience where you have no idea what’s about to happen, except you know it’s going to be a memory for life.”
“Honestly, meeting these people was one of the most special things. We just had a watch party with most of the cast and Jeff [Bailey] turned to me, and he was like, ‘This is what life’s about.’ There’s only two teams from the same place — us and Nick and Mike [Fiorito] — and everybody else is from vastly different places, vastly different ages; and yet there’s a through line with everybody who would do something like this that we all really connect to each other in sort of a familial way,” McCalley added. “I’ve hung out with Jeff and Pops like extended family now three times in three different cities, I’ve seen Brett [Hamby] and Mark [Romain] in Vegas. I’ve gone to Salt Lake and I’ve seen Scott [Thompson]. It’s crazy to see yourself reflected in people who are so different from you.”
That family is only going to continue to grow when “The Amazing Race” returns for Season 38 this fall on CBS.
“The Amazing Race” Season 37 is now streaming on Paramount+.
The post ‘The Amazing Race’ Season 37 Winners Reveal the Secret to Their Success — and You Can Do It, Too appeared first on TheWrap.