‘I blame Phil!’ ‘The Amazing Race’ castoffs Kat and Alex joke that the ‘conspiring’ host was ‘in cahoots with the train stations’
‘I blame Phil!’ ‘The Amazing Race’ castoffs Kat and Alex joke that the ‘conspiring’ host was ‘in cahoots with the train stations’
On Big Brother 21, Kathryn “Kat” Dunn went viral for constantly asking the other houseguests, “Are you bitches conspiring against me?” Now that she and her boyfriend, Alex Romo, have been eliminated from The Amazing Race 38, the conspiracy theories are ramping up.
“Phil was conspiring against me,” Kat tells Gold Derby with a laugh during the duo’s exit interview.
Alex jumps in to defend the show’s longtime host, Phil Keoghan, who has won 10 Emmy Awards for producing The Amazing Race for CBS. “You did not!” he says to his girlfriend. “We love Phil. Phil was awesome.”
Kat adds, “I think the biggest conspiring bitch was the train that didn’t show up,” referring to their hold-up during the second leg.
“Man, that train screwed us so bad,” Alex agrees. “It put us three hours behind every other team. It seemed close, but it was not close. Even in Prague, we didn’t see a team literally till that fourth leg going into Hungary, which is wild.”
Kat jokingly doubles down on the host being at fault. “I blame Phil! I don’t know how he did it,” she laughs. “I don’t know how he’s in cahoots with the train stations. We do [love him], but I think he was in on it. The train just doesn’t not show up. Like, someone did this.”
Alex recalls “all the cameras” focused on them as the train they were waiting for kept getting delayed and then was eventually canceled: “There’s no way this just happened. We’re literally stuck in Frankfurt, Germany.” Looking back, he considers that to be one of his “favorite parts” on the race because they “formed such a close friendship” with people like Angela Murray, Lexi Murray, Taylor Hale, and Kyland Young.
Season 38 of The Amazing Race pairs Big Brother all-stars with family members. The first four teams to get the boot were brothers Vincenzo “Enzo” Palumbo and Giacomo “Jack” Palumbo, mother-daughter Angela and Lexi, newlyweds Matt Turner and Megan Belmonte, and now Kat and Alex. Nine duos still remain in this special “European adventure” installment.
“The best thing about the entire thing was doing the race with Alex,” Kat proclaims. “This was a dream of his growing up. This is the show that he watched. He comes from an immigrant family — he’s a first generation American, and this is how he and his family experienced the world. They traveled the world through The Amazing Race.”
Alex always wanted to compete on the program, but as a former Big Brother player, Kat wasn’t sure she’d be allowed. Then one day, the casting team reached out to her, which was “the biggest blessing” of all. “Big Brother fans know, they’re not dipping back into BB21 very often,” Kat declares. “They thought of me and called me and were like, ‘Do you want to do it with your boyfriend, Alex?'” And the rest is history.
Watching the drama unfold at the train stations on TV is giving the couple “old school Amazing Race” vibes. “It’s been a lot of fun watch, to be honest,” Kat says. She and Alex were so far back that they just assumed they were “in second the entire time.” Amazingly, they did not see Tucker Des Lauriers and Eric Des Lauriers “once the entire race,” except for the during the premiere.
After appearing on Big Brother and The Amazing Race, Kat hopes to be on Survivor or The Traitors next. However, “When the going gets tough, I cry,” she readily admits. “I do not work well under pressure. Tell Survivor that if they want me, I’m ready, but there’s going to be a lot of tears. Can you imagine me crying at the round table [on The Traitors]? ‘I promise I’m not a Traitor!'”
The Amazing Race airs every Wednesday on CBS and streams the next day Paramount+.