Exclusive: Idries Abdur-Rahman and Jamil Abdur-Rahman talk 'The Amazing Race' (Part 1)

Idries Abdur-Rahman and Jamil Abdur-Rahman were eliminated from The Amazing Race during Sunday night's second broadcast of the CBS reality competition's 22nd season.


The "Twin Doctors" became the second team eliminated from the around-the-world competition after they arrived at the Race's second Pit Stop at Motu Tapu, the most photographed island in the South Pacific, in last place. They had struggled with a Detour task in the deep ocean, fell behind from there and just couldn't seem to ever catch up.

In an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Monday, Idries and Jamil talked about their short-lived The Amazing Race experience and what exactly went wrong prior to their ouster. Below is the first half of the twins' interview. Check back with Reality TV World on Tuesday for the concluding portion.

Reality TV World: How far behind Pamela Chien and Winnie Sung do you think you guys finally arrived at the Pit Stop?

Idries Abdur-Rahman: It's hard to say, but I would guess probably no more than like 30-45 minutes. It's just a guess.


Reality TV World: When you guys arrived at the Pit Stop, did you have a pretty good idea you were in last place or were you still thinking there was a chance to finish in eighth or ninth place or something?

Jamil Abdur-Rahman: I knew pretty much that there was no way we were anything else but last. So I pretty much knew going into it.

Idries Abdur-Rahman: Yeah, I knew because when Jamil was doing the challenge with the stilts, and I don't want to discourage him, but I kind of started counting the stilts at the end -- you know, where people had left them -- and I knew based on that, that either they got really creative and left some extra stilts or we were behind. But I didn't say anything, because I didn't see the point.

Reality TV World: Did you two have hope it would be a non-elimination leg or did you just kind of feel discouraged at the end of the leg, like your time in the Race was just kind of up?

Idries Abdur-Rahman: Of course you always hope, as every Racer does coming in last, that it's a non-elimination leg. But from just watching previous seasons, I've rarely found them happen that early on. So I was pretty doubtful it would be a non-elimination leg. But you always have that little glimmer like, "Come on [host Phil Keoghan], say it's a non-elimination leg." Like, cut! Take two!


Reality TV World: How long did it end up taking you guys to complete the "Pick a Pearl" task?

Jamil Abdur-Rahman: (Laughs) It took us about two hours I would say and basically what happened was, as they showed last night, we had dropped a few of the oysters to begin with.

And we basically [wiped] all the oysters clean and we only found on pearl, so we realized there's one at the bottom of the ocean. (Laughs) We could not get down there to get it, so I would say we were there for about two hours before we realized that we had to go do the second task of the Detour.

Reality TV World: Jamil, so it sounds like it was the task itself that proved to be very difficult rather than a struggle to swim efficiently on your part, right? Is that accurate to say?

Jamil Abdur-Rahman: To an extent. I mean, I sensed that my fear of the water was still the main issue, because even though I can swim, I'm afraid of deep, open water. And so for a long time, I didn't even want to get in. And when I finally did get in, I'll be honest, I was scared.


So I think that when you get scared, you get tunnel vision. And so, we didn't -- I didn't at least -- neither one of us I don't feel attacked the task properly instead of taking each line. We first started by taking individual oysters, and that's just because we weren't thinking. We were nervous.

And that's what resulted in us dropping one of the oysters. So I feel like indirectly, it was that fear of the water that cost us in the end because we weren't thinking too clearly. But it wasn't an inability to swim. Because I was telling people, if you watched, we both swam. I just didn't want to get in that water at all.

Reality TV World: Idries, you obviously shared that fear, correct? Because the show showed you refusing a couple times to try the Pearl task when Jamil was insisting he wouldn't be able to accomplish it. 

Idries Abdur-Rahman: No, I mean, I definitely do share that fear of water. But I kind of hopped in there and told him, "Let's get in. The water's not too bad." But I mean, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of water myself. Like he said, I can swim. I'm not going to die out there, but I'm just not a huge fan of open bodies of endless water. It's just not my thing.

Reality TV World: Why did you guys decide to do that task to begin with instead of the "Take a Trunk" one?


Idries Abdur-Rahman: It's kind of funny. When we were at the priest, initially we said we were going to do the "Pick a Pearl," but then when we were on the boat, we were kind of talking about it with one another and what I kind of pictured in my mind was from Season 19, the last leg when they were in Florida and they were kind of riding around on those bicycles underwater and had those respirators on.

I told Jamil, "If we're walking on the bottom of the ocean floor, we clearly have to have some kind of respirator." So we, at that point, kind of changed our minds and said, "We want to go ahead and do the Trunk." But the thing is, they were in the same place. If remember reading the clue, it said "the bay" -- I don't remember what bay it was.

So then there was really no way to discern where the trunks were and where the pearls were. So when we got there, we could clearly see the lines of pearls, and I remember Jamil looked over the boat and said, "Oh, there's a trunk!"

But then when we started moving, we were like, "No, that's not a trunk. That's just a swimmer." So we were like, "Well we don't know where these trunks are." I asked the guy, like, "Take us to the trunks" -- or I said, "Take us to the bay." And he said, "We're here." And I was like, "Well I don't see any trunks. So let's just hit the pearls."

Reality TV World: So how long did it take you to actually complete the "Take a Trunk" task? You guys said on the show you got through it fairly quickly.


Jamil Abdur-Rahman: Oh yeah, that's what killed. I think maybe 10 minutes -- maybe 10 minutes to do the trunks. It was easy. That just burned even more.

Reality TV World: Oh wow, so if you had opted to do the "Take a Trunk" task in the first place, how do you think it would've changed the course of events for you guys? Do you have any idea what place you might've been able to finish in considering how you ran the rest of that leg?

Idries Abdur-Rahman: I think if we had done the trunk task, I think we would've probably come in second or third, because if we would've finished it in 10 minutes like we did, we would've been ahead of everybody that did the pearls.

And so, you know, there was only one other team initially that did the trunks, so we would've kind of been neck and neck with them. So it would've come down to a whole stilt race, but we definitely would've been one of the top teams.

Reality TV World: That must be a crushing feeling.

Jamil Abdur-Rahman: It is, just a little bit. (Laughs)


Reality TV World: So Jamil, how long did it take you to complete the stilts Roadblock task? And was it as difficult as it appeared to be?

Jamil Abdur-Rahman: I think it took me about half an hour. And it was -- I thought it was really difficult. I think it was a little bit tougher for me just because we had been swimming for three hours.

And so, I was already exhausted and my feet actually were soft because I had been in the water so long. And so, my feet got cut up, and it was really tough. I was physically and emotionally just drained, but it was tough. But I don't think I was doing it for more than half an hour.

Above is the first half of our exclusive interview with Jamil and Idries. Check back with Reality TV World on Tuesday for the concluding portion.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski