Pack your bags, because The Amazing Race is back! Every week, Parade’sMike Bloom will bring you interviews with the team most recently eliminated from the race.
Despite Brett Hamby and Mark Romain being a Cirque du Soleil performer and dancer, respectively, it took them a minute to get their footing. Through the first four legs, the married couple had a couple of brushes with the back of the pack, which frustrated them, as they felt they had more skill than their track record indicated. And, after being the most vocal team during the U-Turn Vote, the two were able to kick their race into a brand-new count of eight.
Starting in Leg 5, Brett and Mark became one of the most consistent teams across the entire cast. For five legs, they finished in first place twice, and never placed below fourth. But momentum can stop at any time on The Amazing Race, and Brett and Mark experienced just that as they crossed into France. Self-driving proved to be their undoing, as navigational difficulties and a loss in the Head-to-Head put them in last place by a decent margin. Despite being in a rare position for them, they continued to push through, which worked to their benefit when they somehow jumped all the way up to second at the Detour. But their “stork” quickly fell when they struggled building a nest. And an impromptu decision to follow Alyssa and Josiah Borden to the Pit Stop proved to be a race-ending one, as one of the frontrunners to take it all was sent out in a day as pungent and hole-filled as an aged French cheese.
Now, out of the race, Brett and Mark talk about how their mood charted over that up-and-down leg, finding their momentum on the race and their decision to call out Scott and Lori Thompson during the U-Turn Vote.
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What was it like watching your downfall back last night, considering how well you were doing up to that point?
Mark Romain: I feel like watching it back, I was actually pretty pleased. I felt like we were having fun more than it felt like at the time. And so I was really proud to see that. And watching it back, I think we really underestimated how strong of a team we were. So to see what we actually could accomplish under pressure and being with our backs up against the wall, I was really proud to see.
Brett Hamby: We still had fun. So that was nice! [Laughs.]
Talk to me about your history with The Amazing Race. And what made you decide to go from fans to racers?
Brett: We were fans for a long time. So I would watch with my grandparents, and he would watch with his grandparents before we met.
Mark: Since the show started. So we’ve been watching since Season 1.
Brett: We’ve been big fans, and we talked about that when we were dating and all that jazz. When did it come up?
Mark: I’ll tell you when it came up! You had asked me twice. We’ve always been like, “So we’re gonna be on the race since we first got together over 10 years ago.” And over time, we wanted to apply. And we got to a place where we didn’t have the same day off for at least the last seven or eight years besides COVID. And we were like, “We need something to change. We need to get away. “We really wanted to feel like a team again, because we had been kind of dividing and conquering in life. And so the race really gave us opportunity to get away from the world and kind of remind ourselves what it looked like when we are a team.
Brett: And we kept just saying we were gonna do it, saying we’re gonna do it. And then one day it was just like, “Now, let’s just do it.”
Mark: I mean, I think that’s what’s special about the race. We just really wanted some time together. We really wanted to feel like a team. And so like watching it back, seeing that we are a good team, meant a lot. And that’s what we really wanted.
You were in last place for most of this previous leg. But there was a period of time where you somehow ended up in second place at the Detour–
Mark: Well, we didn’t know. Just like Alyssa and Josiah, we thought we were fighting for last So because we love Josiah and Alyssa, and we’re so close to him, we spent the whole Detour being like, “I love you, and I hope you lose! I’m so sorry. Nothing against you. It’s us against you!” That was hard.
You make the decision to try to follow them after finishing the Detour, rather than getting directions. And, after you lose them, you actually run into Han and Holden as they’re leaving the Detour. Did you debate possibly following them to beat them at the Pit Stop?
Mark: Great question! [Laughs.]
Brett: I think I’ll back up just to before. So getting that stork thing going was a challenge because we’re just missing the little, tiny details. Which he didn’t even do for a while. And then we saw them. My brilliant idea was to follow them, and we just couldn’t get in the car to get them, and we lost them. It’s this little town. Some of the street signs are like little bitty baby ones.
Mark: And I think it’s important to know that, the stork [task], we were in someone’s backyard. So the only person available to ask for directions were the people that Alyssa and Josiah were talking to. So we were just kind of in line waiting to ask for directions. And we were like, “We can’t be doing this. Let’s just follow that.” We lost them. And there’s no one in this text. We accidentally end up in the little town square where Han and Holden are. We’re coming, they’re leaving. We didn’t even think to follow them because we were like, “That didn’t work already.” We get out so near the laundry. There’s tons of people to ask. But no one wanted to give us directions. We askedthree groups of people. We finally get the people Han and Holden got, and we ask them for directions.
Brett: At that point, we were just so frazzled. We got the directions. And every time he would get in the car after doing the directions, he’d be like, “I got it, I got it, I got it.” Like, cool, let’s go. He’d get in the car and be like, “I don’t know where I’m going.” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t know, because you had the directions!” So I couldn’t help him. So we ended up asking another family, which was so cute. They had a little baby. It was really cute. And then we we got to a point where I could see the flag, and I was like, “We need to go there.”
Mark: But this is up in the middle of vineyard. We don’t want a car in someone’s house. And so I think it was a moment where and we discussed, “We spent 10 legs of the race never giving up.” We had some bad legs, and this was probably the first leg where it felt like we were making poor decisions, and that was really, really hard. But I’d say one out of 10 legs isn’t the worst. However, it’s not the best time for it to happen.
To your point, after you were finishing in the middle of the pack in the first few legs, you had mentioned how your skill level was not being reflected in your placements. Was there an adjustment you made before you kicked things into high gear, or did it just come on its own?
Brett: I mean, it, it kind of worked in some ways, in terms of the U-Turn and the Driver’s Seat. But also part of the race is luck. We may have gotten ourselves lost a little bit in that last leg, but the rest of time you we got a taxi who wanted to pull over. We got a taxi who got lost. I guess the takeaway for me is triple triple check. Because even our taxi in Hong Kong, I had lived in Hong Kong, so I knew that he was taking a weird way. And I knew we had to cross the water. And I was like, “What? Wait, we gotta go there!” And so I had to reiterate to him a few times, and got on the right track. You just don’t know, so you kind of have to just roll with the punches on things you can’t control and then just make up the time where you can.
Mark: And that was the lesson we learned early on. There’s going to be more than just skill to this race, and we’re just have to roll with the punches. And that’s okay. I’m glad we learned that lesson early on, and also, to our advantage. We got to know the teams at the back of the pack, the middle of the pack, the front of the pack, which was great socially, because there is a social game. No matter what anybody wants to say, there is a social game aspect to this. And so I think it really kind of helped us. We were so serious in the beginning. It helped us take a step back and be like, “Let’s start having fun,” because that’s what we’re here to do. We can’t keep struggling forever, and that’s out of our control. So what’s in our control is, let’s have a little fun!
You talk at one point about the different temperaments you have. While Brett is a little lighter, Mark, as you mentioned, can get “angry just to be angry.” We didn’t see much conflict between the two of you in the race. So were you able to find common ground, despite how different you approach the tasks?
Mark: I think honestly, almost going home on the second leg, having that experience with Ernest and Bridget and the drums really taught us very early on how special this experience was. And we weren’t going to waste it arguing with each other. So I think that really put it in perspective very early on. We did have some disagreements, absolutely. But at the end of the day, we learned, because of that bad luck early on, that this experience was way too big for us to be wasting time on that.
Brett: This was a dream. We wanted to have as much fun as we wanted to win.
Mark: Even when we were in France and we were at the back of the pack, Brett ran across the street, and then we weren’t supposed to go. And I was like, “You can’t go!” And he was like, “I’m going!” And I was like, “We’re supposed to have fun today!” So we were mad. We were trying to yell at each other to have fun.
Well even if you didn’t have internal drama, there was a bit of drama you brought to the U-Turn Vote. You speak up, accusing Scott and Lori of playing up their age and slowness to not come across as a threat. Talk to me about what made you want to be so upfront, and did you regret that possibly backfiring, to your point about it being a social game?
Brett: I don’t think so. Because I think on the mat the day before that, you saw a little bit of what went down. Everyone was on the same page. Of those back teams, they saw what we saw. And we weren’t the ones who were orchestrating this. Everyone was on the same page. So when it went down to the U-Turn, and they were just saying, “Oh, we don’t do this. We don’t do that…”
Mark: We just happened to be the first in line. And I happened to not be able to keep my mouth shut. [Laughs.] Every single team had the exact same thought I had. In fact, Phil thanked me on the mat for bringing it up. He was like, “I’m so thankful that you brought it up, because they can’t keep pretending that they’re not [a threat].” Every other team was like, “I’m so glad you spoke up.” Because at the end of the day, and I said it very clearly on that day, and there’s footage. I said, “We all like you. No one is saying we have an inauthentic relationship with you. It’s authentic.” However, the expectation that we won’t play against you in return is a social game, and that’s not something I’m going to be manipulated or guilted into not doing, because we’re here to play a game. So to say that we’re not friends or anything is taking it to another level. That was never a part of the game.
Brett: And everyone saw it when they said they were gonna guilt trip Jonathan and Ana.
Mark: That’s what they said! They said it was personal to them, but then they also said they were guilt tripping. So for me, like it’s not adding up. So that’s why I said what I said.
Brett: It didn’t feel like we were doing that, because everyone saw.
Mark: Everything I said out loud, every team had already said to each other. So it did not feel like we were sticking our neck out. It felt like we were speaking what everybody else was already talking about.
Mark, we have seen you appear a couple of times as a guest on RuPaul’s Drag Race. If you could cast two queens on the race to follow in your footsteps, who would they be?
Mark: I feel like the go to answer is obviously Bob [the Drag Queen] and Monét [X Change], because they are an absolute riot. They’re two completely different personalities.
Brett: And they’re delusional enough to think they can do every challenge.
Mark: And one of them thinks they know everything, and that’s giving very Brett and Mar. So that that’s like my first go to answer.
Brett: Plus the fashion.
Mark: However, if I were to pick some other personalities that I think would be really fun. I mean, Vanjie would be an absolute terror, and that would make for great TV. And I have to be honest, Derrick Berry is a good time. Now, would they be good at the race? That’s a completely different matter. [Laughs.]
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