Sometimes, camels are dry. This is what happened to the sister team of Marianna and Julia on The Amazing Race 12, in the small village of Bingo in Burkina Faso. Julia tried to milk her camel, but it took over four hours and when she was done the sisters found themselves in the back of the pack. Marianna and Julia were fierce competitors, drawing the ire of a number of their fellow Amazing Race teams. The sisters stopped by earlier today to discuss their time on the show.
Below you will find the full transcript as well as the mp3 audio of the interview.
Can you talk a little bit about how you ended up on The Amazing Race. Were you big fans of the show beforehand? Was it your first time applying?
Julia: It was our first time applying, but we’ve been watching since season one. My sister and I, it’s the first time … actually there’s four of us. Two older brothers and two younger sisters and we all wanted to do it with each other. But it’s the first time within our adult lives that we were old enough to, that we lived together in the same city and were able to, you know? And we made an application and we got it.
What was the most surprising thing that you hadn’t anticipated once you got on the race?
Marianna: I think all the different aspects to the race. How it had so many … you know it’s not only based on your physical ability but also on your mental ability and a lot of other factors that are out of your control. You’re expected to walk into this race being able to control everything. Like relying on yourself mostly for how far you get. And a lot of the things are out of your control and it makes it tough and it makes it so that anybody can pass up and no matter who you are or what you can do or what you’ve done, it’s anybody’s game really. And that kind of surprised us a little bit I think.
Like the camels last night, do you think any part of that was the milking technique that you guys were using? Or was it more the camels you had to use were dry?
Julia: My camel was dry. So there ya go. Like I said when there’s milk, you can milk the camel because until I got to move camels, there really was not a drop coming out of my camel. And at first I was like: ‘Okay maybe I’m screaming and scaring the camel,’ but in reality there was just not milk. Finally the guy that was holding my camel, the farmer said to me: ‘Yeah, no milk.’ And I was like: ‘Oh yeah, thanks.’ We weren’t allowed to change until all the other teams were done anyway.
Do you regret helping Lorena out with the camel as you guys left?
Julia: I don’t regret anything. I mean karma is how karma is and I thought that you know, after we had been out there through a rainstorm with it raining, crazy wind storm, sand storm … we had been, I mean they didn’t show the extent of that. We were there probably about four or four and a half hours out there trying to milk camels and when the rain came, they all lowered their bodies to the ground. It’s just something they did … and you couldn’t even milk them for a good amount of time because they were all laying on the floor. So when we were leaving she had been through that whole struggle with me and at that point, you know, to me it’s about trying to help other people out at the same time. The race wasn’t what was so important at that point in time. After four hours of struggling it was just like, let me just not have to see someone else struggle for another four hours.
How far did you actually finish behind Lorena and Jason last night on the show?
About a minute and 25 seconds.
Was there anything over the first three episodes that you guys wish they had shown of you that they had edited out?
Julia: What don’t we wish (laughter). There were a lot of really big things going on, we had issues with Ron and Christina. With the other teams, none of them liked us from the get-go, but we tried to make alliances and we tried to make friends, but for some reason after we didn’t exchange euros the entire extent of the island life, all the other teams thought we were lying about it. Like it automatically became we’ll lie about anything if not we’re just making stuff up. So I don’t know what happened or how it happened, it must have been we were so aggressive and so competitive and we’re always so driven and just focused, other teams just didn’t warm up to that. They’re like: ‘There are ten other teams in the place.’ So we didn’t really hit it off with the other teams and I wish they would have showed that a little more. Why we were having such struggle at the back of the pack, because we were basically on our own while all the other teams were just helping each other out.
What did you think of Donald’s comments about you guys last night?
Julia: I think he’s great. I think it’s funny and whatever I’m not going to take offense to somebody calling me bitchy. I love grams. We love gramps. Gramps was just like everybody’s dad in the race. Except he was like the dirty old dad that you don’t bring around your friends.
He has no problem taking all his clothes off or anything, right?
Julia: Yeah. I was like: ‘Come on gramps.’
Is there anything in your guys’ future that you’d like to talk about? Just back to normal? Or what?
Marianna: I’m debating going to New York for a little while and seeing what I can pick up out there. If not …
Julia: We take it day by day, you know? I’m writing. I’m not actually writing right now because the WGA is on strike, but I’m actually writing a screenplay that was a vision of mine since I was a little girl. So I’m really excited about it.
-Interview Conducted by Oscar Dahl
(Image Courtesy of CBS)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
