Angie Butler and Danny Butler. Yuri Hasegawa/CBS
The Amazing Race season 36 contestants Angie and Danny Butler’s elimination was a hard one to watch as it came down to something outside of their control.
The mother-son duo had a chance at beating out Ricky Rotandi and Cesar Aldrete for the first-place finish during the Wednesday, May 1, episode, until they lost their production crew on the road. The competition rules state that teams can’t go on without their camera crews, so Angie, 55, and Danny, 27, had to sit and wait at the final detour as other teams passed them.
Although the episode made it look like their crew showed up eventually, Angie and Danny have since revealed that wasn’t the case.
“They had me say the line like, ‘Hey, our crew is here.’ Our crew wasn’t there,” Danny exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, May 2. “I don’t know why they decided — maybe it’s because we had waited so long — but they just grabbed another crew that was already there and [were] like, ‘Hey, they’re going to take you down to the beach.’ And so probably about 30 minutes into the detour I think is when we ended up seeing our cameramen again.”
Ready for their greatest adventures! The Amazing Race aired its first season in September 2001 — and has had its fair share of shocking moments in the decades since. The CBS game show follows teams of two as they race around the world completing various tasks and mental challenges in hopes of winning $1 million. […]
Danny also ventured a guess as to why it took their crew so long to find them after taking the wrong turn at a roundabout.
“It was a local driving them. I think the local literally just got lost for an hour and a half, even though the challenge was, like, 16 minutes [or] 17 minutes from [where we lost them],” he said.
Angie added that the crew that ended up filming them during the final detour was at the beach when they first arrived, and offered to step in for the lost crew. However, producers decided that she and Danny should wait for their own team.
“There’s all these meetings going on because it’s unprecedented,” she explained. “And to their defense, I don’t think anybody knew what to do. So, it was a learning experience.”
Despite feeling powerless as they waited for their crew, Angie and Danny are content with the events that led to their elimination.
“If we had been eliminated because of something mom had done, I feel like mom would’ve been really sad [and felt like], ‘I let you down,’” Danny explained. “I was a superfan. I was like, ‘I can’t let my friends clown me for something I do. I can’t be eliminated on a roadblock or getting lost.’ And to go out in a way that we had zero control over [was better].”
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While Danny and Angie often finished toward the back of the pack early in the season, they hit their stride a few episodes in. During last week’s episode, they finished in second place despite starting 30 minutes behind the first group.
“I think we figured out how to race,” Danny said of their marked improvement. After going into the competition convinced that he and his mom were “going to be a strong team,” Danny admittedly got concerned when the heat took a toll on Angie during the first day.
“I was worried for her as a child and I immediately went like, ‘Alright, we’re just going to have a fun experience. Let’s go as far as we can,’” he recalled. “But then after the fourth leg, when we got third place, I went, ‘Nah, we’re winning this. We’re winning this. It’s no longer about the fun.’ And you saw that mental shift of like, ‘Alright, we’re competing.’”
Angie added that her “confidence grew” as the competition went on. She recalled a moment from an earlier episode when she considered giving up on a challenge and taking a penalty as she struggled to ride in a hot car wearing a protective suit.
“I got back in that car. After that I was like, ‘OK. We’ve got this figured out. I can do hard,’” she said. “It might look dramatic, there might be tears, but I can do it. And the only reason I felt like I could do it is because Danny kept [giving me] encouragement.”
The Amazing Race airs Wednesdays on CBS at 9:30 p.m. ET.
