Suffice it to say, the penultimate leg of “The Amazing Race 32” was not music to DeAngelo Williams‘ and Gary Barnidge‘s ears. The former Carolina Panthers teammates were doing pretty well on the city sprint leg in Manila until the final music memory task, which stumped all four teams.
Unfortunately for the pals, the other three teams — their former Mine Five alliance-mates Riley and Maddison, Will and James, Hung and Chee — were the same ones who’ve had it out for them since the sauerkraut task in Berlin. DeAngelo and Gary survived last week by arriving at the Double U-Turn first, but the “Amazing Race” gods weren’t shining on them this time. After getting rebuffed on an offer to work together, the duo helplessly watched as the trio of teams took turns knocking out guesses by trial and error. As they all took off for the Pit Stop, DeAngelo and Gary opted to incur the two-hour penalty instead, and the former did not hide his frustration at the mat, telling Phil Keoghan that he regretted doing the show and would never do it again.
Does he still feel that way? Find out in our exit interview below.
Gold Derby: That was a very harsh end. What was it like watching that and reliving it again two years later?
DeAngelo: I’m salty. [Laughs] I’m still salty.
Gold Derby: Have you forgiven any of them at all?
DeAngelo: So I’ll categorize this as a 1.0 and a 2.0. A 1.0 is I was never mad at them — it’s a game — and a 2.0 is I’m mad that I had to relive it two years later and see how it went down.
Gold Derby: DeAngelo, you tweeted last night that you don’t regret doing the show, but you’ll never do it again. Why?
DeAngelo: I don’t regret it. I told Gary I’d do it and I’m a man of my word. I don’t regret doing it. But I won’t do it again because it’s not my cup of tea. It’s hard and it wasn’t what I expected.
Gary: I want to clarify that he did have fun.
DeAngelo: Oh, here he comes with the nice stuff! [Laughs]
Gary: [Laughs] He did have fun and I think if they did a charity season, he’d do it again.
DeAngelo: It’s not my cup of tea, man. … It was more like poop. [Laughs] Just things between the legs.
Gold Derby: You alluded to behind-the-scenes stuff on Twitter and said you’ll discuss it on your podcast, but what can you tease now?
Gary: So we were in Paris and Angkor Thom and all these places, but we didn’t actually get to see them. That’s the stuff that angered De. In the past, teams have gotten go out in between legs, but it’s just Pit Stop and you do interviews and go straight to the hotel or wherever you’re staying. We’d just be in our hotel looking out our window at Paris. During the leg, we’d just be driving by the Eiffel Tower or whatever. He didn’t get to experience these places we went to, so that’s the behind-the-scenes stuff that upset him, but between the start and the end of the legs, he loved it.
Gold Derby: After you realized they were working together, did you say anything to them at all?
DeAngelo: So I just want to say that everyone in the cast is in a group chat — the entire cast. We’ve been chatting for two years. One thing I’m grateful for is the show has brought all these people into my life — some I probably would’ve never met. … And as the episodes air, everyone texts nice things to the eliminated team — pictures and everything — but last night, no one was really saying anything. So I was like, “Hey guys, we just got eliminated. Where’s the eliminated love you’re showing everybody else?'” And I think Leo said, “Hey, man, we ain’t got nothing for you. The longer you’re in the race, the least likely people will feel bad for you.” And I was like, “Damn!” [Laughs]
But you know, Will and James and everybody started commenting, like, “Oh, we’re gonna miss you guys.” It was like, “No, I’m gonna be right here. I’m not going anywhere,” just cracking jokes. It’s the nature of our group chat. But as a result of doing the race, the race has brought me good friends outside of it, so I’m thankful for that. See, look at that, Gary, I found a silver lining!
Gary: Finally!
DeAngelo: But if I lose them as friends, then I’m gonna have nothing!
Gary: I’m here for you.
DeAngelo: You can’t lose a brother.
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Gold Derby: When they rebuffed working with you, did you make anything of it? Did you think they didn’t want to work with you specifically or did you think it was every man for himself?
Gary: At first, we thought it was every man for himself. There was no more alliance, which is fine, so be it. But the thing that a lot of people don’t know is after the first leg, we actually talked to the beard bros and we had an alliance with them, like, “Hey, we’re gonna make sure us two teams get to the finals.” So I think that’s why it stung more, seeing everything that happened, because also during that last challenge, beard bros came up to us and said, “Hey, if you get the answer, let us know. If we get, we’ll let you know.”
But the other two teams didn’t want to work together, so we thought our beard bros alliance was still strong because nobody else knew about that. It wasn’t filmed, it was all off-camera. We thought they were gonna stick to what they said, but seeing that, that’s what stung. We didn’t see them working together a lot because they would stop when we would turn around. But once we saw Riley and Maddison get it and run away from us, we knew, “All right, there’s nothing we can do about this because we don’t know what the final answer is.”
Gold Derby: Do you feel like the beard bros led you on throughout the race since they were really more committed to Will and James, and Hung and Chee?
Gary: To a point I would say yes. But as De would attest, we’re athletes, and they’re athletes too. As an athlete, your word is your bond, you stick by it. That’s what you need to trust your teammate. We thought they would have our back and keep their word, which is why I made that comment in the episode last night: “Hey, we kept our word. Others don’t keep theirs.” That was in the reference to the alliance we had with them after the first leg that we never knew they were breaking.
Gold Derby: Did you think about taking the penalty as soon as you learned they were working together?
Gary: We didn’t decide on the penalty until all three of them got it. When they got it, we knew the Pit Stop was coming up. We knew two of the answers for sure and one we were pretty sure, but we would’ve never gotten France just because when I did the Roadblock, I was there for maybe five minutes, so I never heard music. I was in and out. I never picked up on any music in France, so that would’ve never been a choice in our heads to use France.
Gold Derby: How frustrating is it to see that you were off by one flag twice?
DeAngelo: It was very, very frustrating because we knew 1 and 3. This is what’s sad. Even watching it last night, we knew 1 and 3, and 1 and 3 were what they needed. So if any one of those three teams had been like, “You know what? Screw this! I’m gonna talk to them,” then we would’ve been outta there in 15 minutes. That’s what it was super frustrating to me because we had a super secret alliance that we thought we had that we didn’t have that would’ve gotten us potentially to the finals.
Gold Derby: When I talked to Eswar and Aparna last week, she maintains that you guys made a “really dumb move” U-Turning them. Do you regret U-Turning them and not one of the others?
Gary: I definitely don’t. The only other team we probably would’ve U-Turned was beard bros because that would’ve sent them to the longer challenge. We felt that gardening would take longer than pulling nets in, so we did the quicker challenge — we were done in 10 minutes — and we knew it would take [the other teams] 10 minutes to do it. And we still had the tile challenge, which took like three hours, so if we don’t U-Turn brother and sister, we would’ve gone home that leg. We were struggling with — well, I wasn’t struggling; he was struggling with the tiles and I was napping. [Laughs]
DeAngelo: I’m gonna be honest because Gary’s being all nice and stuff. Eswar and Aparna had to go because they were deadweight. They were part of the Mine Five, but I just felt like if we U-Turned them, there was no chance in hell they would be able to catch us because looking at past legs, they were never high on the radar. However, if we fumbled and tried to take out a strong team and they eventually passed us, we’d look really bad.
Gary: I will say that if Hung and Chee had gone to the fish challenge like they had intended and we had passed them, we might have done Hung and Chee. Not gonna lie. Our only option was U-Turn one of the teams that did the fish challenge because we knew it was short. And at the point, we still think we still have our alliance with the beard bros, so why would we U-Turn them when we were working to get us two teams to the finals? So it was only logical for us to do Eswar and Aparna because they did the same challenge as us.
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Gold Derby: Those three teams felt like you weren’t pulling your weight in the alliance. What do you have to say about that?
Gary: If you go back and watch all the episodes, I think there’s three, maybe four, times where we helped out. It just happened that two of them were with Will and James. They chose not to help and then tell the other teams that “we helped them out.” That’s kudos to them for playing the alliance against us. There’s multiple times we helped. I know everyone makes a big deal about sauerkraut with Hung, but De told her, “Hey, there are letters. Look for letters on the way down. They’re gonna ask you a question about those letters.” He prefaced what she was gonna see. She already knew before she started walking what to look to for. Without De, would she have done that? I don’t know. Would she have figured it out on her first try? There’s no idea.
But everybody makes a big deal about us stealing the cab too. We told them we’d wait with them and they said, “No, go ahead.” So we went and we didn’t even know they were behind us. Will and James, and the beard bros also took cabs before Hung and Chee.
DeAngelo: Now that I look back on this, what did the Mine Five truly do for us? Outside of sauerkraut, which was not part of the Mine Five, and this is why: If it was part of the alliance, then I wouldn’t have had to make a separate deal with Hung on my way up. If that was an alliance thing, then it should’ve been offered with everyone there. She waited for the other two to come down to tell them. She would’ve never waited for us. Looking at it now, I’m like, “Dang it!” If I had known [they were working together], I would be so much farther along in life. [Laughs] But that wasn’t part of the alliance. Where else did they help us outside of sauerkraut?
Gary: We helped Will and James with the tightrope, we helped them with sauerkraut. I helped James with the iPads in India. The beard bros helped us with the prawns, and Hung told them about the school. But again, we’re thinking we’re in an alliance with the beard bros.
Gold Derby: That does change how you look at all the interactions.
DeAngelo: It does, right? That’s why it’s crazy to me. When people find out, they’re like, “Yo, you were in a secret alliance with the beard bros?” What they see on TV is completely contradictory. And I understand there was no way of me knowing this, but I feel really stupid watching myself on TV and them doing interviews right in front of me about how they’re in this three-team alliance and screw Gary and DeAngelo. It’s like you’re in a relationship and somebody’s cheating, and you’re just watching them do it. And they go, “Nah, nah, it wasn’t me.”
Gold Derby: Were you rooting for anyone in the finale then?
DeAngelo: This is all you, Gary!
Gold Derby: That’s a no for DeAngelo.
DeAngelo: Just silence. Hell no! [Laughs] Give her the silence!
Gary: You know I can’t do that. I’m the Sugar side of the Cinnamon and Sugar, c’mon. I would say I think Hung and Chee are the people I’m rooting for. They did really great in the beginning. They tailed off a little bit. We couldn’t root for the beard bros because we thought we were in an alliance and were backstabbed. I will give James and Will credit — they were the masterminds of their alliance, making all the calls and everyone going with them. But I would be rooting for Hung and Chee.
DeAngelo: I’ll tell you this, and this is just me being honest. I’ve said this before and Gary can hate me for saying it again. He told me before we came on, “Don’t embarrass me.” But just like at the mat, I’m gonna lay it out. If you break down the last three teams … there’s nothing entertaining about them. Why would you want to pull for any one team when you don’t know how strong they are as a team? In every episode, they’ve helped each other in some aspect of the race.
Gary: I want to clarify that they’ve all gotten villain edits, so they’re a final three of villains.
DeAngelo: So do we really know strong these three teams are in the final?
Gold Derby: I guess we’ll find out since you’d assume they won’t work together in the final.
DeAngelo: That’s what we said. We know they’re entertaining when they’re in an alliance versus someone else, but are they entertaining when that alliance is no longer there, and it’s a race for a million dollars?
