'The Amazing Race 35's Steve Cargile and Anna Leigh Wilson Reveal a Parking Mishap That Actually Eliminated Them
Steve Cargile (L) and Anna Leigh Wilson (R)
Pack your bags, because The Amazing Race is back! Every week, Parade's Mike Bloom will bring you interviews with the team most recently eliminated from the race.
Steve Cargile and Anna Leigh Wilson had a number of differences between them. Though they shared the same DNA, the father/daughter duo differed in age, gender, and height. But the one thing they undeniably had was familiarity. After getting off to a middle-of-the-pack start, the pair hit their stride as soon as they touched down in Vietnam. Caught up with the other teams, they surged to the front of the pack, finishing in the top two spots in each of the next three legs. While it was an incredible moral (and literal) victory, it also made them the prime targets for the upcoming U-Turn vote. As the only team being U-Turned, Steve and Anna Leigh had to fight an uphill battle. And it was in India that we started to see some of the major cracks form for the team, namely their difficulties with the small details, and Anna Leigh's propensity to jump to the worst conclusion. T
hose issues climaxed as the two hit Europe. Their first encounter with self-driving proved to be a harmful one, as they spent their time in Germany and Slovenia self-destructing with navigation, getting into intense arguments in the process. Though that sent them to the back of the pack--most memorably when they climbed the highest ski jump in the world for an Express Pass that was already taken--they were able to scrape by in excelling through the tasks themselves. Unfortunately for Steve and Anna Leigh, they were unable to reclaim that front of the pack status for the rest of the race. In the penultimate leg in Ireland, even after Steve struggled during a Riverdance Roadblock, they thought they could dance their way into the Final Three. But navigation caught them for the last time. Getting lost between Roadblocks had them falling to last place, where they couldn't recover.
Now out of the race, Steve and Anna Leigh talk with Parade.com about what did them in in Ireland (and a heights task we didn't see), their arguments over self-driving, and their response to the fan reaction to their edit.
Related: Everything to Know About The Amazing Race 35
So how are the two of you doing right now? Because I would imagine watching last night back could be both a chance to remember how close you got to the end, but also an opportunity to reflect back on your overall journey?
Steve Cargile: We started off going, "We don't want to be the first eliminated" and we ended up getting this far. It makes you feel like, "Well, I could have taken that next step." And we were so close. But somebody's got to go home every week. And if you make a mistake or two, it's you.
Anna Leigh Wilson: Yeah, I think I'll have PTSD the rest of my life, just going back and replaying what we could have done. I beat myself up. And I am mad at myself for not doing something more. But I think we both gave it everything we had. So, for that, I'm proud of us.
Well not to crack open that PTSD once more, but let's talk about what happened in Ireland. Because it seemed from the edit like you simply got lost between Roadblocks and that lost you the race. But Anna Leigh, you seem to indicate that there were other things you feel you could have done?
Steve: I think we still got through the challenges, the Roadblocks pretty quickly. It's the navigation. I mean, when you get one wrong turn and one set of directions wrong, then you start questioning. If I had anything to do going back, I would probably take more time getting my directions. Even if teams were passing me, getting my directions right. Because you can pass them when they get lost. And you know what, we almost got Joel and Garrett last night. They took a wrong turn. And maybe if I can run a little bit faster and farther, we might have beat them there. Just little things. I wish I trained harder. I had no idea watching from home. This looks like a breeze. And it's not! It's the real deal.
Anna Leigh: And they actually missed last night. We actually had to turn around and go back to the parking lot because we were told that we exited the wrong way. So that cost us right there an extra 45 minutes. It felt like, had that not happened, I think we still would have been in the race.
Steve: We might have been better off taking the penalty if there was one. We still don't know whether exiting on the second floor or the first floor would have been a penalty. But we went back and just did it anyway.
Steve, you just mentioned you almost caught back up with Joel and Garrett. Can you talk a bit more about that?
Steve: We left the dance in front of them. They left reciting the poem in front of us. But when we got to the stadium, they left out a whole segment of stuff that was going on around the stadium. I did watch them when they were doing their Roadblock in the stadium. They kind of made it look like we were still running in and that time delay. But we were really close to 'em.
Anna Leigh: There's a whole segment, I'm not quite sure why it wasn't shown. But we actually rappelled down the Megatron. Everybody put on harnesses and we went to the top of the stadium. I don't know, I guess it was just a whole extra Route Info that got cut out.
Wow! Well let's get into some of the great heights you climbed to--and rappelled down--in this race. Anna Leigh, I know you said on the show that you wanted to go on the race with your dad before you started a family of your own. But what made you decide this would be the place for you two to reconnect?
Steve: We always watched it. And then, competing with a spouse, I can't imagine competing with a spouse on those legs.
Anna Leigh: Oh no.
Steve: It'd be tough. So our personalities are quite different. But we know each other so well. We work together so well. You see on the show she pushed me. I pushed her whole life. And that's what makes her who she is today. We just knew we'd make a good team. We work together really, really well.
Your race really surged in Vietnam, and you went on to finish first, second, and first. What was your reaction to that sudden success so early on? Did it surprise you?
Anna Leigh: Not really, no. I knew that dad was really good at challenges. I knew that anything he was faced with, whether it was strength or something. As long as it didn't have to do with running and endurance, I knew that he could get through it. And I had every bit of confidence in him. That's why in Slovenia, when it came to the binoculars in the plane, I knew that that was his task. I was already flustered. I knew that me trying to fumble around with binoculars would not have been a good idea. I think he did great. I knew he could get through every challenge.
Steve: I think after the second half of the lotus flowers, we made a decision. We vocalized between us that we were going to try to avoid those judges at all costs. And when we started picking, I think we picked good challenges that we worked through. Even when we climbed the stairs on accident, coming down to putting the beehives together, we took two different approaches. We helped each other. She painted them all. And all I say is, "Hey, I can't lift this." Boom, she was there. We put it together. We smoked through the challenges, I thought. We did it all.
Now the other edge of that sword was that you were set up as the team to beat in the U-Turn vote. What was your reaction to getting U-Turned? And how did that lead to that moment at the Roadblock where everyone started admitting to you, Anna Leigh, that they voted for you?
Anna Leigh: I think they planned on me calling them out. But dad and I saw across the street. We saw his big ol' hat. And we were like, "Yep, it's us." And we kind of knew it. We had the targets on our backs. We had just run two legs that some people would consider first.
Steve: That non-leg was a first. It was a first!
Anna Leigh: But we just put the targets on our backs. And we knew we had people coming for us at that point.
Steve: Our strategy was just kind of stay in the middle of the pack, and then come out at the end, as long as we could survive. And we kind of peaked a little bit earlier. We got the target on our back. Once we got it, we knew that we had we just had to work our way through the challenges. And we caught John and Greg, the first-place team, at the bricks. And we were loading side by side; we were dead even in first place. And they stopped us and said we missed that receipt on the first one. We had to travel 45 minutes back, get that receipt, come back, and still survived.
Anna Leigh: I genuinely think that, for production purposes, they saw we got there so fast and realized there wasn't enough drama. I think so. Because we were there. We had every opportunity to get first again.
You mention your gameplan going in. And I've heard through my other interviews that you had an alliance with Todd and Ashlie and Liam and Yeremi. Was that something you wanted to pursue before the race started, especially with a U-Turn coming?
Steve: Defeinitely. We knew that Chelsea and Robbin kind of rubbed people the wrong way. Having two teams have our backs and said they wouldn't vote against us, the numbers added up. We say, "Well, if we can avoid the U-Turn, we can kind of stay in the top of the pack." And that's where we wanted to stay. That didn't quite work out, I guess. Joe and Garrett said it best. "We don't want to run into y'all again." They're great guys. That was funny. He was the one that spoke up and said, "That was me! I voted for ya." [Laughs.]
Anna Leigh: [Laughs.] They knew what was coming. But I don't think anybody else did. But I just wanted to know. I just wanted to pick on everybody, too. And Garrett and Joel are some of our favorite people in the world. We picked on each other so much back and forth. And even when we left last night, we gave them the biggest hug. We had our little moment with them. The saddest goodbye, I think, was with Joel and Garrett.
So you mentioned Robbin and Chelsea. And we did get a couple of moments of you being unhappy with them helping you when you asked for it. But then we get to this interesting moment at the tiles Roadblock where it seems like Anna Leigh, you find Todd's tile and choose not to help him. Talk to me about your thoughts on both Robbin and Chelsea and helping other teams.
Anna Leigh: That was a total mess up. Because I remember that moment. Todd and I were working together. And what I said in that moment was, "I think I see Todd's tile. No, I don't think that's his. I'm not going to tell them." They cut out the middle part and made it seem like I said, "I see Todd's tile. I'm not going to tell him." And I was like, "Are you kidding me?!" Shaking the TV. And then, of course, here comes the trolls on the internet.
Steve: Robbin and Chelsea, they kind of got a bad rap at the start of the show. And we kind of headbutted with them the first time. But it's a race for a million dollars between 13 teams. And you know what, you got to separate yourself somehow. Even though everybody's friendly and lovely, you're not going to just step back and let somebody else take it from you.
Anna Leigh: I mean, it's a competition TV show. That's ultimately what we came on the show for. And I think a lot of viewers have forgotten that. And there are times where I was a little too anxious. I even said it myself. Like, "I need to calm down." Clearly I was getting too into it. But by nature, that's who I am. I'm a very competitive person. I do not like losing, especially for a million dollars. I'm not just gonna watch dad walk. I want to encourage him to go.
Steve: I wanted to go. I just couldn't!
Well speaking to some of those online comments, I want to talk about some of the self-driving you did in Germany and Slovenia. It seemed like things really got heated with you, and some very cross words were exchanged. Talk to me about what you were going through in that moment.
Steve: It's just so frustrating in the heat of the moment. You're under so much pressure to go, go, go. And then you realize you're lost. You realize you've made a mistake, and you gotta go. And a lot of people keep going back to the making fun of the subway [in Stockholm]. I never read on there, "Take the subway." I was looking for a mode of transportation to go from point A to point B. The guy said, "Yeah, I know where it's at." Luckily, Corey stepped in there and said, "Wait a minute. Doesn't it say something about the subway?" And a lot of people missed that too. They were lost trying to find the violin girl. We all helped each other out. It was a great cast along the way. And the navigation. I mean, at home, I'm the directions guy. I've done maps scopes and maps and now electronics my whole life. And it's just different when you can't read the words. It's in kilometers. We finally came up with a plan to watch the odometer and keep up with our kilometers, which helped a lot later. But it was too late.
Anna Leigh: And then especially in Ireland, not only was it driving stick shift, but it was driving stick shift on the opposite side of the car. So you were just completely turned around. It was very stressful. It was go, go, go.
Steve: And I was trying to navigate without killing somebody. People walking everywhere, running across the street in front. You got your head on a swivel. You got to be paying attention to directions, driving, the function of the car.
Anna Leigh: And I will say, the amount of emotions, nobody can prepare you for before the race. I'd only seen my dad cry one time and it was at my wedding. And during the race, I saw him cry probably 10 times. We've never had so many emotions. Oone moment, you're so excited. The very next moment, end of the world. I've never been through such a range of emotions in my life.
And I would imagine you think you'd get use to the pressure. But it gets worse as the teams winnow down and any mistake can send you home. I mean, if you took a shot every time you said, "Come on, dad," you'd be under the table by the end of 90 minutes.
Anna Leigh: We had a watch party. And one of the people that was there, they're like, "Everybody's taking a drink every time we hear it." And everybody was drunk.
Steve: Yeah 19 minutes in, the bartender said, "Yeah, we're done. Y'all lost that game."
Steve, what's your response when you hear that being said to you? Like you said before, it seems like you took motivation from it.
Steve: It takes me a little while to get pushed into a corner before I'll snap back. But the other times that we did were over navigation. None of that had to do the running part. The running part of it I was struggling [with], and she was pushing me. I mean, people who are personal trainers do that. I don't understand the world population coming after her for saying, "Come on, dad." I mean, she's in front and she wants me to come on. I got it. We're communicating the whole time. You don't see that part.
Anna Leigh: Well what they don't show, too, is how often I was getting in trouble for leaving him. Because you can't be more than five feet away from your partner. And so every single time I would leave within five feet, running in front of him, I would be told to slow down. So that's when I would turn around and be like, "Hey, come on dad!"
Steve: Those "come on, dad"s were preceded by a cameraman or somebody yelling, "Stay together, come on dad!"
Anna Leigh: There's other stuff they didn't show, too. For example, on the stairs I was also telling him, "Go sideways. Use different muscle groups. Go backwards. Maybe take a break. Turn around and walk up backwards." And none of that shown. I was truly trying to encourage him.
Steve: I would have never made up those stairs without hearing my daughter's voice above me. telling me, "Turn sideways, go backwards. Use different muscles." Nothing helped. But you know what? That's 1100 stairs I climbed. And I felt accomplished till I got to the spiral stairs. Then I was like, "Girl, you're gonna have to be patient. I'm cruising!"
[Laughs.] Lastly, you're obviously incredibly involved in each other's lives. But what did you learn most about each other racing around the world together?
Anna Leigh: I mean, I think racing in such a high stress environment, it just confirmed everything I already knew about my dad. He's the most patient and understanding person that I know. And seeing him in that type of environment, it just confirmed everything I already know. It's so cool to see the world through his eyes. It almost changed the way that I see it.
Steve: Me and her mom raised her and always said, "Whatever you do, we want you to be independent enough to not be dependent on a man. Whether you're married or not, we want you to be a strong, independent woman." And that's what she is. People ask for that every day. And when they see one, they freak out and say she needs to die, which is horrible. But I'm very proud of her. She's a natural leader. And she can take the bull by the horns and get done what she needs to get done. We're proud of her.
