‘The Amazing Race’: How 9/11 Threatened to Cancel the Show After 1 Episode
At the turn of the millennium, CBS launched a number of reality competition series that have since become staples on TV, including Big Brother, The Amazing Race, and Survivor. The first-ever episode of The Amazing Race premiered just days before air travel as we knew it changed forever after the September 11 terror attacks. As a result of the tragic day, The Amazing Race and its future was also put in jeopardy.
‘The Amazing Race’ premiered in September 2001
In the opening sequence of the first episode of The Amazing Race, host Phil Keoghan stood atop a building amid the New York City skyline introducing the idea of The Amazing Race and how it was about to change 22 peoples’ lives forever. In the distance, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood tall.
The first season of The Amazing Race was filmed in the spring of 2001. The race kicked off in Central Park and ended in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. Friends and lawyers Rob Frisbee and Brennan Swain emerged victorious at the end of the season, crossing the finish line first and winning the $1 million prize.
The Amazing Race premiered on CBS on Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2001. The following Tuesday, Sept. 11, changed how air travel would be conducted forever.
Phil Keoghan didn’t think ‘The Amazing Race’ would survive after 9/11
The Sept. 11 attacks consumed TV coverage in the week afterward. As a result, the second episode of The Amazing Race didn’t air until the following Wednesday, Sept. 19. In the days after 9/11, however, Keoghan questioned if the show would even return to the airwaves at all.
“I was surprised that we stayed on the air of what happened on Sept. 11. I thought that was the end of it. I really did,” he told Reality Blurred in 2021. “Who the hell cares about a show where people are racing around the world after we’ve just been attacked and all these people died?”
Winner Brennan Swain felt that the show should’ve gone on. “I definitely didn’t think, ‘No, this shouldn’t air.’ I was afraid that could happen. It was such a huge experience for us, and anticipation from April to September waiting for to air, and it finally airs, and then all of a sudden, something way bigger happens,” Swain said.
Show co-creator Elise Doganieri confessed she was conflicted about whether it was prudent to keep the show going. “First, you’re thinking about what’s happening in the world, what is going on. And then later you think, ‘Is anyone ever going to travel internationally? Is anyone ever going to trust getting on a plane again? God, is this just a terrible show to be showing? Or is it showing us that there’s good people in the world?'”
Casting director Lynne Spillman echoed a similar sentiment. “9/11 was just so sad, scary, and crazy. Our show, I thought, celebrated traveling the world and celebrated just how far we’ve come: entering different countries, moving through the world,” Spillman said. “I just thought it was so sad and just definitely going to change everything.”
9/11 affected season 1 post-production and season 2 pre-production
At the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, the first season of The Amazing Race was still in post-production, and its second season, already greenlit, was in the middle of pre-production. Casting was in its final round.
“We had a hotel full of contestants to go on the next race. Everybody was in finals,” Spillman revealed. “I had my two kids at home — babies. I didn’t want to leave them, but I also didn’t want to bring them. It was so scary, but we had to get to the hotel to talk to everyone and just say, ‘Look, we don’t know what’s gonna happen. We would like to continue finals. This could be this year, next year.'”
Doganieri, meanwhile, was in Morocco scouting locations for season 2. The New York native was in the Twin Towers in the 1993 bombing and knew people who worked there on 9/11. After several weeks, Doganieri returned to location scouting around the globe.
“We got on a plane a month and a half later to continue scouting,” she said, admitting, “I was very frightened to get on an international flight, but we did it, and I think that just shows the resilience of everyone in our country.”
