Raleigh’s Holdernesses talk about ‘Amazing Race’ journey and this week’s finale
Updated March 2, 2022: How did Kim and Penn Holderness finish on “The Amazing Race” finale? Check out our recap here.
Kim and Penn Holderness, part of the Raleigh family known for “Christmas Jammies” and other viral videos, have made it to the finale of CBS’s “The Amazing Race” — during a season that presented even more obstacles than normal.
In a season unlike any other in the history of the long-running show, the Holdernesses and 10 other teams of two began competing for the $1 million grand prize back in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck and shut down production for 19 months.
Production resumed in fall 2021 with several COVID precautions in place, and the season premiered to viewers in January.
So far on this 33rd season of the series, the teams have traveled to England, Scotland, Switzerland, France and Greece, completing tasks that have tested their physical, mental and emotional strength.
The Holdernesses have been fierce competitors throughout the season, winning four legs of the race thus far — more than any other team. And on Wednesday, we’ll learn which team wins the $1 million prize.
Ahead of the two-hour season finale, The News & Observer talked with the Holdernesses about what their journey on the show has meant to them.
Here’s what the duo had to say about their family’s support, how they prepared for the race, mental health challenges and more.
Going on the show seemed ‘logistically impossible’
On their popular social media accounts and on the Holderness Family Podcast, the Holdernesses have said multiple times that they’re long-time fans of the “famously grueling” show, watching from the very beginning in 2001.
The duo said on their Dec. 14 podcast that they had dreamed of going on the show for years, sometimes even singing the show’s theme song as they would complete various tasks in their everyday lives, such as assembling furniture.
But the show requires competitors to be gone from their homes, families and jobs, without cell phones and other forms of communication, for at least a month for filming — something that felt “logistically impossible” to the duo, who have been busy for years working in the TV news industry, raising children and starting their own business.
“It’s always one of those things that’s been on our bucket list, but it never occurred to me that we’d ever be on it,” Kim Holderness said on the Dec. 14 podcast.
In early 2019, though, they got the call telling them that they’d been cast in the upcoming 33rd season of the show.
The couple recalled thinking it was an amazing opportunity, but thought there was still “no way” they could leave their kids, who were 12 and 9 and the time, for 30 days without contact.
But it ended up being their kids who gave them the push they needed to commit to the show. The duo recalls their daughter asking them, “Are you going to remember some February of your life, or are you going to remember going on ‘The Amazing Race’?”
“The only reason that we were able to do it was that we had children mature enough to tell us to go,” Penn Holderness told The N&O in an interview last week.
That rang true twice for the duo, as their kids once again gave them the encouragement they needed to go back in the race when producers told them that filming would resume in fall 2021, after initially shutting down just one week into filming in February 2020.
Family was their ‘constant inspiration’
The couple’s kids continued to serve as their “constant inspiration” throughout their time on the show, they told The N&O.
Competing during the ongoing pandemic — while their kids’ lives at school and elsewhere were marked by virtual learning, mask-wearing and cancellations of events and activities — helped the duo put their struggles on the race into perspective, Kim Holderness said.
“There are many times where I’m like, if my 12-year-old, if my 11-year-old can do this, I can run with a backpack, you know, I can suck it up, and I can keep going,” she said. “Because in perspective, people have done way harder things.”
The duo has also talked at multiple points on-camera during the race about their kids, even saying at one point that they hoped to put the $1 million towards their future college tuition costs, and that they rejoined the race after the pause in filming to show their kids that they could finish what they started.
“Honestly, as middle-aged parents, we just want nothing more than to make our kids proud of us,” Kim Holderness told The N&O.
And their kids do seem to be proud.
During the Week 8 episode, Kim and the other remaining racers completed a particularly tedious and grueling roadblock challenge that required them to spend hours turning over stones in search of small coins underneath. All of the racers struggled, and viewers could tell that it was a difficult task.
While the Holdernesses watched the episode as a family, they said, both of their children got up and hugged Kim without prompting, showing that they could tell how tough the task was and that they respected their mom’s effort and determination.
“We were apart for a while, but I think that it’s brought us closer together as a family,” Penn Holderness said.
Like a ‘super stressful honeymoon’
The duo said that the race also made them closer as a couple.
“It was a really special time for us, for our relationship,” Penn Holderness told The N&O. “I think that was the part that I liked the most.”
Without their cell phones and other “distractions,” he said, they just had each other and the race to focus on.
At first, Penn recalled, he thought it was daunting — that the couple might get “super sick” of one another. But, he said, it ended up having the opposite effect.
The duo got “in tune with each other pretty early on,” he said, quickly understanding what the other person was feeling, noticing what was important to them in the race and respecting each other’s vulnerabilities.
Kim Holderness said the experience was like a “super stressful honeymoon.”
When filming resumed, the couple said, the show’s producers generally had the cast stay in “less touristy” areas of the cities where the teams were competing in order to limit how many people the cast was exposed to — which often meant the hotels didn’t even have TVs for the racers to watch during their downtime.
To pass the time, the Holdernesses read books and did puzzles together, allowing them to stay “in sync” throughout the race, they said.
“It was the closest I’ve ever felt to her,” Penn Holderness said.
Tackling mental health throughout the race
The duo’s increasingly strong relationship throughout the race likely also helped as they dealt with the mental and emotional toll the race brought.
As in much of their online content, the Holdernesses have been open throughout the show about their struggles with mental health — specifically, Kim’s struggles with anxiety and Penn’s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
The couple said they didn’t go into the race specifically hoping to highlight mental health, but it was instead born out of their genuine feelings and reactions to the race that they shared with producers in on-camera interviews.
When producers would ask them how they felt about a certain challenge or task they completed, the duo gave honest answers, which sometimes included references to behind-the-scenes panic attacks or other forms of anxiety.
“I didn’t even know that they would show that,” Kim Holderness said. “I’m happy they did, but you’re on a reality show, and you just have to be yourself. And I don’t know any other way than just to be myself.”
The duo said they hope the messages help de-stigmatize conversations about mental health, both for viewers in general and their kids watching at home.
“Even for my children’s sake, you know, if this is something they face in the future, I want them to know that you can do really hard, scary things,” Kim Holderness said. “You may be, you know, freaking out internally, but you can still do them.”
How their ties to the Triangle helped on the race
Triangle viewers of the show with keen eyes and ears might have picked up on a couple references by the Holdernesses to a certain university in Durham this season.
The first reference to Duke University came on the Week 5 episode, when the duo picked a mule named Duke to complete a detour challenge.
Penn, who went to the University of Virginia but who is also a North Carolina Tar Heels fan, said the couple didn’t know the mule’s name before they picked him — and it wasn’t an easy pill for Penn to swallow once he found out.
“I said several times while I was walking down the mountain, ‘I can’t believe I’m encouraging a mule named Duke,’” Penn Holderness said.
Then, just one week later, the duo used “Duke University” as a memory aid when completing another detour challenge that required them to remember the sequence of several metal fish they saw underwater.
The duo’s references to Duke show that you’re never quite as far from home as you think, even when you’re thousands of miles away. And, they said, there were lots of other moments on the race that also reminded them of their home in the Triangle — especially ones that involved lots of hills.
“In this Triangle area, there’s so many great hills,” Kim Holderness said.
The duo took advantage of those hills, training on weekends at locations around Raleigh, including Umstead State Park and Shelly Lake, running up and down hills carrying various objects, such as backpacks and kettle bells.
That came in handy when the race took them to hilly locales, such as those in Switzerland and Greece, the duo said.
“That’s how we trained, and it served us well,” Kim Holderness said.
Penn Holderness said another facet of life in the Triangle also served the duo well: Southern hospitality. Growing up in the South, he said, he has been comfortable for most of his life asking strangers for help or directions, which the race required the duo to do often.
“In the South, you learn how to approach people in a friendly manner if you need something. And it happens all the time, it happens every day,” Penn Holderness said.
“And even if we didn’t speak the language in the country we were in, I feel like the training I’ve had my entire life of just coming up to a stranger and trying to show as much gratitude and respect with my body language is something that I learned in the South.”
What to expect from the Season 33 finale
After traveling through England, Scotland, Switzerland, France and Greece, the Holdernesses’ journey on “The Amazing Race” will come to an end this week during the two-hour season finale.
Ahead of the final episode airing, the duo said they’re feeling grateful for their experience on the show and that they had the opportunity to compete after this season’s bumps in the road.
“We were always really aware that this is an incredible privilege,” Kim Holderness said, citing that they were able to make it work logistically with their kids and work after dreaming of going on the show for so long.
“We went in with the attitude of, even if we go home first, you know, what a cool opportunity that very few people in the history of the human race have been able to do,” she said. “So now, at this point, to have made it this far in the race that has taken 19 months, 20 months to complete, it feels really heavy.”
Not even the Holdernesses’ kids know how the race ends, the duo has said, but Kim told The N&O that the finale, which airs Wednesday, “will not be boring.”
The four remaining teams are set to travel through Portugal and Los Angeles on the final legs of the race.
Who will walk away with the $1 million prize? We can’t wait to find out.
How to watch ‘The Amazing Race’
You can watch Wednesday’s season finale of “The Amazing Race” at 8 p.m. on CBS, or stream the episode after it airs at cbs.com/shows/amazing_race.
You can read our recaps of all episodes of Season 33 of “The Amazing Race” at nando.com/warmtv.
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 9:01 AM.
