Exclusive: Carol Rosenfeld and Brandy Snow talk 'The Amazing Race'

After finishing the two of The Amazing Race's last three legs in second place, the "Dating Couple" team of Carol Rosenfeld and Brandy Snow appeared to be beginning to peak just as the Race was entering its final legs.


However unbeknownst to them, they had earned the ire of "Dating Models" Caite Upton and Brent Horne -- who opted to use the ninth leg's special U-Turn option to force Carol and Brandy to complete an additional Detour task that resulted in the women becoming the seventh team eliminated from The Amazing Race's sixteenth edition.

On Monday, Carol and Brandy talked to Reality TV World about their The Amazing Race experience -- including how they were surprised to learn Caite had an issue with them, what "mean things" they believe they had actually said to Caite, whether they feel the fact that Caite only ever seemed to identify them as "the lesbians" may have suggested she had additional issues with the women, and what they thought of some of "Detectives" Louis Stravato and Michael Naylor's gameplay tactics.

Reality TV World: Other than the "tiara" comment the producers kept showing another team telling Caite you'd made about her again and again and again, what other "mean things" did you ever say directly to Caite?  That's all they ever seemed to show.

Brandy Snow: That's all they HAD to show!


Carol Rosenfeld: Yeah.

Brandy Snow: I mean let's be honest.  (laughs)  

Carol Rosenfeld: I think watching the last several weeks, when it started with "the lesbians" and "the mean lesbians" and "the lesbians" and "the mean lesbians," I think we were both kind of blindsided because to have this painted as some kind of feud with Brent and Caite, we were completely unaware of any kind of feud.

We were never really in the same place with them until we were a good five or six legs into the Race.  We were on different buses in South America, on different planes leaving South America, and I have yet to see a tape of us being mean or rude or less than polite.

All I've seen is a lot of "good job you guys" and "good luck today."  So someone's going to have to show me and prove it to me.  Whether they were manipulated by Mike and Louie into believing that or she thinks or lesbians are mean, I really don't know.


Brandy Snow: (laughs)

Reality TV World: "The lesbians" seemed to be the only way Caite ever referred to you during the Race, and it seemed to reach the point on last night's episode where Jordan finally broached the obvious question of whether her dislike of you was simply because you're lesbians.  What's your take on that?

Brandy Snow: I think it is.  Carol is actually hesitant to use the word homophobic, as am I because I don't think she's specifically homophobic.  I think she has a problem with lesbians.  I think that they call into question -- you know look, she was raised in a pageant world, she competed in pageants. 

There's value placed on being beautiful and a lot of different things that kind of go along with that.  And I think the way that Carol and I are, the way that we operate in the world -- who we are and what we stand for -- is very different and called into question and perhaps threatened who she is or what her core values were.

And I have to say for me, this was my national coming out party.  Like, I'm on national television.  Work acquaintances and people like that are like, "Oh, I had no idea!"


Because I'm just a very private person.  My family had met many of my past lovers in past relationships and things [but] I didn't run around broadcasting anything because I'm just a very private person.  So being on national television, having it being my national coming out party, and then being labeled and hated -- that label has been a really interesting, sort of devastating, very emotional kind of experience to have to go through.

And Caite posted something on her Facebook last night about how she doesn't hate gays and lesbians, she actually loves them and supports them, but well then it's like if you had a specific issue with either one of us, or either one of us had said something that offended you -- specifically -- [then] call us out and use our [actual] names, don't lump us together and label us.

Carol Rosenfeld: I'm not buying she doesn't.  I mean it wasn't like they took the "tiara" comment and played it over and over in terms of her saying -- I mean it was every week on more than one occasion. 

So Brandy said the exact thing -- I would be very hesitant to call anybody homophobic because I think it's a pretty harsh statement and criticism of somebody, I'll let other people be the judge of that.  But it is kind of with the hate and derisiveness with which she says it in kind of that snide way, and it's like "wow."

I think also, to some degree, she also felt -- and I'm not blaming Brandy at all -- that Brandy was stealing her thunder.  There's another very beautiful woman on the show, she's been a successful model in Europe, and I think Caite was a little probably surprised and intimidated by that. 


It was funny because we were like "good job," "you guys rock" -- I mean we knew that they were younger and faster and stronger than we were.  So it's kind of odd to see that people may have also been intimidated by independent, half-intelligent woman.

Reality TV World: [But] you guys did go off on her after you found out you'd been U-Terned...

Brandy Snow: Oh yeah... are you kidding me?

Carol Rosenfeld: You haven't even seen -- if she thinks I'm a mean lesbian, that was even nice of me. 

Brandy Snow: (laughs)


Carol Rosenfeld: You haven't even see me...

Brandy Snow: Carol was censoring herself, I did not.

Carol Rosenfeld: I was totally censored myself.

Reality TV World: Well what I was going to say was, do you have any regrets about that or do think at that point all bets were kind of off?

Carol Rosenfeld: No, I'm sending dictionaries for Hanukah.

Brandy Snow: In my mind I have zero regret, I couldn't have done it any differently.  I was very invested in the Race and was completely blindsided and attacked.  And I don't like being blindsided and attacked and I'm not going to take it lying down,


Carol Rosenfeld: You're in the heat of the moment...

Brandy Snow: I'm going down kicking and screaming. Because I wanted to stay in the Race and compete and see how far our best could get us...

Carol Rosenfeld: Based on our own merit...

Brandy Snow: ...and we were robbed of our opportunity.

Carol Rosenfeld: Based on our own best.  And we were robbed [of] that opportunity.

Brandy Snow: And I had, like I said, zero idea that she hated us so much!  I had bonding moments with her, great conversations with her -- I mean I know things about her based on conversations.  P.S.  She doesn't know that much about me, based on those same conversations, because she was very self-focused.


I didn't know who she was until Jordan did his imitation -- which by the way, he's not being called to task or being [called] "mean" on.  It was a genuine imitation.  I had never seen the video, didn't see it until after the Race ended.

And I work with celebrities.  I was not particularly thrilled -- thrilled is the wrong word -- I was not particularly in awe of her.  She was just another racer.  Don't have much in common  with her either, so while I was not overtly friendly because I'm not disingenuous, I was certainly kind and respectful and encouraging when it was appropriate. 

Apparently that wasn't good enough.  She wanted more attention from us.

Carol Rosenfeld: There's not a bunch of tape of me being mean or of us being mean.  It's like I said, we were not even near them for the first third of the Race in terms of being on the same planes, the same buses, etc.

And we were not at all focused [on them].  I mean I knew they young and they were fast and I thought they were good competition from that respect, but you know we weren't even around them so it would be impossible for us to be mean.   Someone's going to have to show me the tape of all that. 

We're on the mat at one point in the Seychelles and Phil said, "One word, how do you feel about them?"  And I said "lucky," they're lucky because they had made a couple of pretty significant mistakes but it didn't come back to bite them in the sense that they were eliminated.  So they were fast enough to overcome those mistakes, it was like props to them.


But to watch it all and, like I said, see the derision is kind of just shocking.  It really is.  And you know, we've watched this every week for several weeks now and it's like we know what's coming and it's like "Wow, this is really very surprising."

Reality TV World: Did you ever consider going for the Fast Forward?

Brandy Snow: No.

Carol Rosenfeld: We knew that we had gotten to the opera house significantly after some other people and we just thought that somebody would have already gone for it.  And especially because we didn't see Dan and Jordan -- everyone else we saw running around the opera house looking for Mr. Wu. 

And we never saw Danielle and Jordan so I think I assumed at that point that they just had gone for it.  They had just found it and gone for it. 

Once we left that train station, we never saw Danielle and Jordan again.  We saw Brent and Caite.  We saw Jet and Cord.  We saw Mike and Louie.  So it was like they must have gone for it, by process of elimination that's where they were. 


So no, we were too far behind and everything we had seen and studied [was] that for a second team to pursue a Fast Forward usually came back and really bit them in the ass.

Reality TV World: What made you both initially decide you wanted to do the "Pounding Drums" Detour task instead of the "Pounding Pavement" option?

Brandy Snow: I just instinctively thought the ice cream truck thing sounded heavier or harder, it sounded like it was going to take longer.

Carol Rosenfeld: Yeah, also it was really early in the morning when we first got that [clue].  I want to say it was before 10AM, and my thinking was, "Who is buying ice cream before 10AM?"  And I was game [for the drums].

And we got over there and Brandy was much more adept at it.  I struggled, I was probably a little more like Jet at it -- I thought he was hysterical last night. 

I struggled with it.  We went to the first [instructor] and it was the tiniest little boy, he couldn't have been three feet tall.  And we were like, "Okay, we'll switch drummers."  And our second instructor, the kid was great and hysterical.


But I struggled with that and I think it would have been hard to sell ice cream [that] early.  Had everything been an hour later I would have been, "Oh no, it's hot, we can do this."

In hindsight, we blew through the ice cream so fast [when we had to do it as part of the U-Turn afterwards] but when we were doing it, again, it was an hour later and was lunchtime.

I think the drums were still the right choice, I just wish I had picked it up a little faster.  Hey, if I had picked it up faster then Brent and Caite wouldn't [have U-Turned us] and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Reality TV World: About how long do you think you were at the drums before you completed it?

Carol Rosenfeld: We were there an hour before we got it, but Brent and Caite [only] went up on the stage right before us.  I mean we were literally right behind them.

Brandy Snow: We were 15, maybe 10-15 minutes behind them at the most.  At the very most.  We watched them go, that sort of kicked us in the ass.  We ran through one more time, got the okay from our teacher -- who by the way, that little kid was the cutest, sweetest boy. 


We're all out there dying of heat -- it's hot -- and he's getting red in the face and he was just so patient and so sweet and so kind.  I just loved him, I just wanted to take him home with me, he was very cute.

Reality TV World: So I guess in hindsight, it wasn't -- given the early morning time that you would have selling the ice cream -- a situation where you feel you might have beat Brent and Caite to the U-Turn if you had chosen the ice cream Detour task right away then?

Carol Rosenfeld: You know, we might have.

Brandy Snow: I've wondered that, we might have.

Carol Rosenfeld: Yeah, now you sit back and now that it's all done you second guess every decision you made.  Hopefully that will end soon!   But maybe we could have gotten through the ice cream, even at that hour of the morning, faster.  Who knows?  It is what it is.

Reality TV World: When Louis and Michael did the ice cream task they ended up selling 10 of the sandwiches to their own cab driver, which seemed a little sketchy to some viewers given they could have basically just repaid him with a big tip later.


Brandy Snow: Yeah...

Reality TV World: What were your own thoughts on that, were you aware of that?

Carol Rosenfeld: Did they actually end up selling him some?  I mean I know he said to his cab driver "You look hungry," but did they actually end up selling some to him?

Reality TV World: I believe they sold 10.

Brandy Snow: Yeah, they sold 10 of them to him.

Reality TV World: Their last 10.


Carol Rosenfeld: Are you kidding me?

Reality TV World: Their last 10, I believe.

Carol Rosenfeld: Oh, I didn't know that. 

Brandy Snow: Yeah, you know that's amazing because we oversold by like five or 10...

Carol Rosenfeld: Yeah...

Brandy Snow: We didn't stop, people kept wanting ice cream from us.  But it's interesting to know that because that actually is kind of shady.  They could have had a deal with him and repaid him later and you, it is what it is, you can't -- I don't know. 


A game is a game and it kind of comes down I think [to] Mike and Louie are playing a smart game [but] it's a little disappointing because it seems like it's dirty and kind of personal.  But for them it's keeping them in it.

Reality TV World: How were you cast on the show -- whose idea was it?

Carol Rosenfeld: You know, it was neither of our ideas.  We were actually approached.  We were asked to interview, we went on the interview [and] we didn't think the interview went well at all. 

[But] low and behold, the next think we knew we were finalists and I think we just kind of embraced that and said let's have fun with this and whatever happens, happens. 

It was this unique opportunity that came to both of us at the same time.  It was like, "Hey, want a one in 11 chance to win a million dollars and travel around the world?"

And it was very out of character for both of us so obviously you're given this amazing gift on a silver platter, it's something you want to embrace.






About The Author: Steven Rogers