‘Amazing Race’s’ Phil Keoghan on casting secrets and backlash, alliances, season 35

Ready, set, race. The Amazing Race’s milestone 35th season kicks off on Wednesday, Sept. 27 — and will air 90-minute episodes instead of its customary hour-long installments.

Host Phil Keoghan notes that “10 o’clock time slots are challenging,” so CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach liked the idea of “a block of reality television” instead of trying to fill something in-between the series and “Survivor.”

“It’s an experiment, like with anything you the audience so far,” he tells the Post. “From our point of view, what’s exciting is that we can open the show up a little bit. When you’ve got 13 teams, now we have 13 teams.”

Keoghan, 56, has been behind the competition series since its 2001 debut. He hopes that the extra airtime will give audiences more context of the contestants and this year’s new location, Slovenia.

“I write the scripts with with one of the producers, and I’m always fighting for context,” he says. “I was just in Iceland with my dad. I took my mom and dad on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. And everywhere I went in Iceland, I was stopped by ‘Race’ fans and they all said the same thing to me. ‘We’re here in Iceland because we saw it on ‘Amazing Race,’ and when you showed us the photos and you told us about the fault between the two tectonic plates, the Atlantic plate and European plate. And when you showed the team swimming, that’s why we’re here and we’re actually going to go down and do that swim.’ Nothing makes me happier than hearing that because I know they remembered the facts, they remembered the context, and then it motivated them to get on a plane and travel to that place. To do the things that the teams are doing. And so that’s something that I’m always pushing for on the show.”

The New Zealand native will guide the Season 35 newcomers as they compete on a 23,800-mile adventure around the world to go for the $1 million grand prize. Teams will be eliminated throughout the season until one pair is crowned the winners.

“At every destination, each team must compete in a series of challenges, some mental and some physical, and only when the tasks are completed will they learn of their next location,” the show’s synopsis reads.

“The Amazing Race” has taken home 15 Primetime Emmy Awards over 24 years on the air. Keoghan keeps most of his Emmys at his home office, but his very first — which he earned in 2003 for Outstanding Reality/Competition Program — is at his California residence.

“I keep the very first one that I won here,” he tells the Post. “I don’t use them as doorstops. … I treat the Emmys with respect. We’re very proud of having been acknowledged.”

Read on for more of Keoghan’s exclusive interview with the Post.

Do you feel a lot of pressure to make the show different each season?

I don’t know about pressure, but certainly a responsibility for us to make the show exciting for the viewers and have them look forward to something. We want to do well and we want it to be fresh and we want each season to be different. …We can add another team. We can put in an express pass. We can put a little twist here and there. At the end of the day, that’s not why people are tuning in. They’re tuning in because they want to see where we’re going, what we’re doing, what the teams are doing, and then who the teams are.

You can change the whole format if you want, but then you mess it up for the viewer. The viewers are turning up because they know what they’re getting. They don’t want it to be radically different. They want what they want. They want the airport drama, which is back. … They want interesting dynamic teams that they can really connect with, and they want to see where we’re going to go.

I’ve used this analogy a lot. Why is ’60 Minutes’ still getting 10 million viewers every week? … The format is exactly the same. Has been for 56 years. What’s new and different? Where they go, what they do and who they do the pieces on. It’s a great format and they continue to repeat the great format. And that’s how I see it with ‘Amazing Race.’

What tips can you give viewers about getting casted?

I think the No. 1 thing is don’t try to be like any other team that’s ever been on ‘Amazing Race’ for a start. There will never be another globetrotting team. There will never be another set of cowboys … Every team that we’ve ever had on ‘Amazing Race’ we try to cast because they’re unique and they’re different and there’s so much of that in America. Especially now that this show has been on for 35 seasons. More and more people hear about it. More and more people want to be a part of it. More and more people are applying [and there are] more and more choices. So my advice to anybody is just be yourself. And be enthusiastic. And trust me, if you stick out like a sore thumb for whatever reason, and we see it’s real, then you’ve got a good shot. But there really is no magic formula, because if you look at the difference between the teams and all the different teams that we have — what was that song on ‘Sesame Street’? ‘One of these things is not like the other.’ … If you look at every single team, they’re just so different. They’re tall, short, black, white, old, young, married, not married, siblings, best friends. The dynamics are also different and that’s why the show works, I think.

The show has brought on semi-famous contestants over time. Did you find that necessary to do? What’s you’re reaction to some fan backlash with that decision?

I’m not going to speak for the network or anything like that. My personal preference is I prefer people who have, like my favorite teams [are] the ones who have never traveled, who are not media savvy, who are huge fans of the show, who really, really want to be on the show and have been following them for years. Those are my favorite teams. Now, does that mean I can’t like a team that comes on that maybe is famous? No, it doesn’t mean that. I’m just saying that I love it when we give the opportunity to someone who has never really had an opportunity like the opportunity that we give them. There’s nothing worse to me than if you end up with a team where [they say], ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve traveled around the world. I do travel a lot. I’ve done this, I’ve done that.’ … Not that they’re not nice, but it’s not new, fresh and as exciting.

It’s dividing with the fans. I have fans who are vehemently against it. They do not like it at all. And their definition of famous is anybody who might have ever been in a local newspaper for being a spaghetti eating champion. … I have others who were like, ‘Oh, yeah, why don’t you do a whole celebrity season?’

Are there any themes that you haven’t done yet that you’re interested in trying?

Viewers are always telling me themes that they want. That they’d love to see an all-winners edition. That’s a conversation that’s happening online right now. … They’ve also been talking about a redemption season where maybe everybody who got second or third gets a chance. [A] first team eliminated season. We’ve lost so many potentially amazing teams from the show because they got eliminated early. So maybe, yeah, every team that went out first — because there’s nothing worse. But the interesting thing is if we did that, one of those teams would be the first [to go again].

Are you seriously considering any of those fan ideas?

Yeah, I think you’ve got to be. It’s so important to listen to your fans. … I engage with my fans. … I like to see what they’re saying and then I’ll watch the dialogue between them. Sometimes I’ll weigh in, sometimes I won’t. But I think there’s an honesty there, right? There’s a window into, ‘Oh, they really, really love this or they love that.’ And sometimes they have conversations where they don’t know how hard it is to maybe implement something that makes sense. … And you don’t want to get too into the weeds with trying to explain to them what they don’t know, because that can take forever. But I think it’s absolutely crucial and I think it’s part of the key to the success of ‘Amazing Race,’ is that we are always listening to our audience.

That engagement is very, very important. So, yes, everything is always on the table. We’re always open to different ideas. I mean, I could see a time if they did do a celebrity version. Where we had celebrities and maybe they came on for their favorite charities.

What’s your take on alliances and how the show is against them?

I’m personally not a fan of alliances. I feel like other shows do that and they do really well. And I think our show in general has not had them. But I’m also not against [it]. When it happened, I felt like it happened organically. It’s not something that we tried to instigate. It happened organically. Most of the time it doesn’t. It made it interesting and it got people talking. Certainly people were sharing their opinion about what they thought about it. I don’t think the show needs it. I like that on our show. People’s destiny is determined by their own actions. I’m not a big fan of shows where someone can manipulate. I’m old school in the sense that I love a competition where everybody gets a shot. But if you don’t do well, it’s not because somebody stood in your way. But I don’t want to take away from people who love the manipulation type shows. Look at how successful ‘Survivor’ is. And that’s all about voting people out and playing strategy and all of that. I’m a pure sports fan, so I hate unfairness in sports.

If you played “The Amazing Race,” what would you excel in and what wouldn‘t come as easy?

Well, I’d want to go with my dad [John Keoghan]. He’s 81, very fit and one of the smartest people I know. He’s like a walking encyclopedia, so I’d feel really good with that. I think it’s very difficult to know where you would struggle until you’re kind of in it. But I think I’ve seen really capable teams lose their mind in terms of being able to just think clearly with simple things. So I would worry that might happen to me like that.

It’s easy to look from the outside, but I think when you’re in it, that pressure can stop you from just functioning the way you normally function. Really smart teams just shut down. They don’t read the clue properly. They run past the clue. They’re not as observant. So I would worry that I might not be as lucid and as aware as I normally am with just the pressure of the race. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. It’s difficult.

The Amazing Race’s milestone 35th season premieres on Wednesday, Sept. 27, at 9:30 p.m. ET on CBS.