Phil Keoghan says The Amazing Race could make room for a bigger celebrity lineup, but not without trimming the race itself. The host said an all-celebrity season would have to be a limited run, with fewer episodes and a shorter distance, because getting famous contestants to line up their schedules would be the hardest part.
Keoghan laid out the idea in interviews with Page Six and Yahoo, saying the main obstacle is not interest but timing. “I think one of the hard parts of it would be aligning everybody’s schedules, because so many celebrities are so booked up and their schedules are so tight,” he said, adding, “It would have to be a limited run, maybe reducing the number of episodes and maybe running a shorter distance.” He also said, “I just don’t know about getting celebrities that people would want to watch on Amazing Race away for that long, and traveling that far and going through the challenges of what’s involved.”
The comments land after a stretch in which The Amazing Race has already leaned on familiar faces. The previous season featured teams of Big Brother players and a loved one competing for a one million dollar prize, and the show has used semi-famous names before that, including Mike White, Boston Rob and Amber Mariano, and Natalie and Nadiya Anderson, who later moved on to Survivor. It also once ran a full season of influencers before the Big Brother season, while Season 8 included Stassi Schroeder competing with her family.
That history is why a celebrity version does not sound like a radical break. The race has long mixed regular contestants with people viewers already know from reality TV, sports and online fame, and Keoghan himself has suggested that “real people” seasons have anecdotally felt more popular. Even a one-off celebrity edition would fit that pattern, though it would likely need to be built around a tighter route and a smaller number of legs so the cast can actually show up.
There is another wrinkle that makes the idea feel less hypothetical than it first sounds. Will Forte and Val Kilmer had long wanted to team up for the show before Kilmer’s death in 2025, a sign that the race has already pulled at the imagination of people far outside its usual cast pool. For now, Keoghan is not promising a celebrity takeover. He is saying, plainly, that if the show ever goes that way, it will probably be shorter, narrower and shaped around the one thing fame never makes easier: getting everyone in the same place at the same time.
