One Year of Reality and How It Nearly Killed Me: My Life Behind the Scenes (4 page)

Kind of…

This show was a prime-time network show. This was the big time. That meant a lot to me. I had always wanted to work on a network show, but I’d never thought it would be a reality show. I’d assumed I would end up on a one-hour drama series that would be successful for the next ten years. While
Amazing Race
was similar to
Wild Things
, it was even bigger in scope in many ways. It involved more money, tighter deadlines, and contestants.

I had never worked with contestants before. My new job had two parts; I would be working with both the casting department and the production department. I considered myself the coordinator for the casting department because I organized their travel and the travel of the contestants, and was responsible for putting up the casting and semi-finalists contestants at a hotel in Los Angeles. I also had to set up contestant interviews, medical exams, psychological testing, and make sure they’d filled out all their paperwork and turned over their passports. It seemed like a lot for the contestants to go through, but for a pile of money, what did they have to lose?

While I was organizing crew visas, travel, and working with the casting department on travel for them and contestants, Philip was organizing the
hiring of the crew and equipment that we needed and arranging for it to be shipped. The production managing part of the job was very big, and I was grateful that both Philip and I were on board. One person could not have done everything that was required that first season. Normally, for a smaller show you have a production manager, and then a production coordinator below them. We had no coordinator on the show, so I saw myself as the production manager-coordinator. A hybrid with enough work for two people.

I settled into the enormity of my job. The work I needed to do for the crew was fairly straightforward because I only had to get them the visas they needed for the trip and I was hoping to get the contestants additional visas in their passports so that they wouldn’t necessarily know where they were going. But I had one problem in getting the visas;

We
didn’t know where we were going.

The details for the show were changing all the time, and nothing was set in stone. And to get visas for around forty crew members plus twenty-two contestants, I needed time. So I decided to cover my bases and tried to get visas for the cast and crew of any and all countries that were mentioned. Of about
400 countries, around 150 required visas. I made a point of keeping track of all the countries and the paperwork they required on a spreadsheet. While I wasn’t sure exactly where we were going on the show, it was easy to surmise which countries we were most likely to visit, since it would be easier to utilize the previous contacts and facilitators we’d used over the three years of
Wild Things
. At least that’s what I figured, which helped narrow down my workload quite a bit.

My production drug was on overload. I’d never been so busy. The whole staff was buzzing. There was so much to complete in such a short time. I felt that I had hit my professional stride. I was working on something that was challenging but manageable. While in the past I had constantly second-guessed myself, now I had confidence. I knew what I was doing, and it was like riding a bike downhill. Even though I had done this sort of work before, I’d never done it within such a small window of time, especially given the reality that the show was still in flux, and things were changing as the producers traveled around the world to see if what we were attempting to do would work. There were changes right up to the last minute. And changes on an international show can be very hard to quickly facilitate.

There was a “war room” where the producers would work out the logistics, games, and rules of the show. It was a room with a large map on one wall and schedules and ideas on another, and it was exactly how I imagined a room in which generals would arrange a military operation. The producers would go through the entire world, coming up with ideas and trying to plot out various places to go and the order to go in. I’m betting that these guys could run a small country. I am always in awe of the producers and all the ideas they would come up with. There is always a lot of arguing, what was good and not good. And mostly I remember a lot of laughing. After all, they were creating the show from scratch and really had to envision how things would actually run on the race. They would need to have some kind of ESP to figure out all the angles of what could happen in a country. The reality is you can’t figure out everything, but you can sure try.

By the time I started on
Amazing Race
,
Real World
had been on for almost a decade, and
Survivor
and
Big Brother
had already been on for at least one season each. So people were just getting used to the larger competition shows, but there was nothing as big in scope or as complicated as
Amazing Race
. And the running around the world, well, that was the biggest challenge of all. So it felt like I was a part of
something really groundbreaking. Aside from the responsibilities I had on
Wild Things
, I was also responsible for working with the casting department. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them, but the one big rule I tried to remember was, “Just ask everyone what you can do for them.” And as people tell you what they need, you figure out what you are doing. I never had any sort of official outline of what my job responsibilities were, except that I was supposed to do what I had always done.

As soon as you walked into the office, there was a large bullpen, an area with tables, phones and computers, and then there were little offices along the walls. I set up shop in the bullpen, so I got to see everything that was going on around me. The mood was exciting and frenetic. The funniest part was watching videotapes of potential contestants talking about why they should be on the show. Some were absolutely hilarious. In one of them, a naked woman was dancing with her two little Chihuahuas covering her breasts. I wasn’t quite sure why that would’ve made her a great contestant. Then there were people singing or dancing in their pleas to be on the show. And there were also a few really boring ones. I think there should be a show about all the audition tapes or, at the very least, a dedicated YouTube category. At the time, I didn’t realize that the best contestants
might not always be the most normal. My version of a “best contestant” was someone who knew the world, had the athleticism to power through all the demands of the events and was able to run to the finish line. But it was much more—or
less
—than that. The contestants needed to be entertaining while also being physically equipped to meet the show’s challenges. They had to have that “IT” factor, like the actors who were cast on regular scripted shows.

There were hundreds of tapes that the casting people were going through, but they finally managed to narrow it down to the semi-finalists who would be seen by the producers and then the network. These people would come to Los Angeles for interviews, fill out a barrage of forms, and undergo testing. I moved from the production office to the nearby hotel where the semi-finalists were staying, and I set up an office in one of the hotel rooms. I had a suite with a bedroom in the back and an office area up front. I had my computer set up, and I was ready to go. I was sort of a babysitter for the potential contestants. If they needed something or had any questions, they’d come see me in my room. I would also have them wait there before going to see the producers or doctors. I got to know quite a few of them pretty well. I became a den mother to them.

While I was at the hotel, I was still working on visas for the crews as well as getting all the paperwork settled for the contestants. I had the latest versions of what countries they‘d be visiting. So while I spent my days with the contestants, I had to make sure that no one went and peeked at what I was doing. So whenever anyone came into the room, I’d pop up a Valentine’s Day card on my computer screen. I’d pretend to be working on the card while the contestants were in my room. I came up with some sort of crazy story about a make-believe boyfriend. When the contestants left my room, I went back to working on the visas. I had to make phone calls and send out e-mails, but most of the work needed to be done either late at night or early in the morning. Still, I didn’t feel like I was getting enough done during the day, the contestants were coming and going all the time, interrupting the flow of my work.

There were some interesting contestants who liked to “stir the pot,” as it were, and they made the job a lot more interesting.

There were two girls from Texas who were particularly fond of causing trouble. It was quite hard to keep them in their room or even keep track of them. One day, they came into my suite with a desk bell. They told me they’d gotten it from the Bell
Captain, and I should ring it so that the contestants could hear me when I needed them. I had to laugh, but I returned it to the front desk immediately. One time they had a night off, and they decided to go out and have some fun. They saw me, jumped into my convertible and I dropped them off at a restaurant where they were going to meet some people. They were quite the party girls and were raring to cause some trouble with their smiles. I was just trying to stay neutral.

There were another couple of guys who were quite the opposite. They would sit in the lobby and take notes. Just sit and take notes all day. I could see them from outside my room. They would wave at me, pads in hand. They would watch the producers sometimes, but they mostly paid attention to the other contestants. One morning they commented on how nice I looked in my car and what I was wearing and where they thought I was going. If I hadn’t known they were incredibly nice, I would have thought they were kind of creepy. They were starting to play the race before they were even in it. They liked visiting my room as well. I always worried that they’d find a way to see what was on my computer, that I wasn’t as savvy with them as I should have been. But if they knew something they shouldn’t have, they never said anything to give it away.

It was hard to be away from the office for so long. As I’ve mentioned, Philip was starting to get the crew together and the equipment ordered, so we needed to be in contact with each other to make sure we were in sync with any changes to the race. It became stressful to have the contestants hang out with me all the time. I tried to find ways of getting them out of my room. Sometimes I’d just say, “I have to make a call, so you need to leave my room.” I knew they would be standing by the door or nearby, so sometimes I would go to the bedroom to take the call to make sure they didn’t hear anything.

I took confidentiality very seriously, and I didn’t want to be the person who screwed up the entire show by giving something away. This was the paranoia that stayed with me throughout my experience with
Amazing Race
. I was paranoid I would be solely responsible for the show going into the toilet.

That was my biggest fear.

Well, after interviews and testing, the finalists are finally picked. I had a bunch of forms for them to fill out and sign piles of visa applications, and—for some—passport applications. The two women who liked trouble and the two men who liked note-taking all made it as finalists.

Now it was time for the contestants to have their medical exams and shots and visit the network one last time. They got the standard number of shots that were required while traveling. I say standard, because they were the same ones we’d get for our crews when I was on
Wild Things
. We also gave them medication, if needed, for malaria and a couple of other things that would help them stay healthy on the trip. Malaria pills don’t necessarily prevent you from getting malaria, but they sure can give you some crazy dreams. A lot of people don’t take it because of the side effects. Everything was running pretty smoothly, except that some of the visas were being processed slowly. The finalists returned home and started to prepare for their trip without knowing where they were heading.

After that, I had more time to focus on the crew.

It was more difficult to get visas for the crew. First of all, they were from all over the world. We had crews from South Africa, Israel, South America, and throughout the U.S. So I had to get visas for some people, and others had to get them on their own, facilitated by a letter from me or an embassy that would help smooth the approval process. Certain crew members needed more visas than others depending on what country they were coming from,
which complicated matters. At times like these I wished that we had used crews from one country to make the whole process more efficient. And I also had to apply for different visas for the crew than for the contestants. Contestants would be traveling on visitors’ visas, but our crews had equipment and would be filming. In some cases they needed special clearance for that. To help get visas for the crew, we often had to have the facilitator in the country we were visiting provide a letter of invitation to the production company before moving forward. I don’t want to make this a lesson in how to get a visa; I just want to make the point that the paperwork and bureaucracy involved in travel were crazy even before 9/11!

And then I got my first heart-stopping shock.

Israelis are not allowed into some countries, period.

I had never heard of this before. I had experience with British passports, which seemed to allow those who held them into every country without a visa—I figured it was because they owned half the world at one time—but I had never heard of anyone not being allowed into a country because of race. The show was going to one country that would not allow in
Israelis. I had to let Bert know about this. He wasn’t too happy, but we had to make sure that a couple of our crew members would skip that country, moving ahead to the next one in the race. I never enjoy sharing news like that with a producer because it messes with their plans. I needed to make sure Bert would be reminded of the issue as the race got closer.

On average, I needed three or four visas for each passport for the crew and contestants. Many of the visas took several weeks to acquire. On average, India takes six weeks, and it didn’t seem to matter what we did to try and expedite it. The process was long and complicated. We had to send applications to the embassy in Washington, which were approved first in the country, and then in Washington. After that, I had to get all the information to the country’s west coast embassy. And the information never seemed to be the same between D.C. and the west coast. So I would have to try three or four times to make sure that the information on the west coast and in D.C. was the same so that I could get the actual visas on the actual passports, and then send the passports to other embassies for approval. I could not do multiple countries at one time. I had to get approval one country at a time for each passport. And I was looking at a calendar every day counting down the days I needed to have all the passports in.